RUYSDAEL, Salomon van
(b. ca. 1602, Naarden, d. 1670, Haarlem)

Marine

1650
Oil on wood, 35 x 43 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Despite the traditional title given in the nineteenth century, the subject of this painting is transport on a river, not on a bay. On the left bank of the river is a village and a Late Gothic church of a type common in Holland. On the right bank, a boat with lowered sails is moored by a farmhouse. The sailboat in the foreground, flying the Dutch flag, is a 'schouw', one of a few types of shallow-draft vessel that were used to ship goods and occasionally passengers between towns on the inland waterways.

Comparable river views, filled almost entirely by sky and water, were painted by Jan van Goyen beginning in the late 1630s. He was probably influenced by Jan Porcellis, to whom he sold a house in 1629. This type of composition became especially common about 1650 in the work of Jan van Goyen, Salomon van Ruysdael, and their minor followers.