River View with Fishermen

Description Like many other Dutch landscape artists, Ruysdael celebrated the new nation's countryside, coastal scenes, and urban profiles in his landscape views. However, they are more impressions of the countryside than exact "snapshots." By presenting the river at an angle that is both a diagonal (on the surface of the picture) and oblique (receding back into space), Ruysdael invites us to follow it into the landscape. Clouds and clumps of trees accentuate these patterns. He was a pioneer of the "tonal" landscape, a Dutch innovation in which a restricted color scheme evokes the pale luminosity of the overcast Dutch skies.

Conservation

Date	Description	Narrative
4/02/1973	Treatment	coated; surface cleaned
8/01/1973	Examination	examined for condition
8/02/1973	Treatment	examined for exhibition; lined; re-framed; surface cleaned
10/16/1980	Examination	examined for technical study
4/20/1983	Treatment	cleaned; coated; inpainted; varnish removed or reduced

Exhibitions

• Masters of Light: Dutch Painters in Utrecht During the Golden Age. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco; The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore; The National Gallery, London. 1997-1998.
• Highlights from the Collection. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1998-2001.

Provenance Henry Walters, Baltimore, before 1909 [mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters