Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00000264Low Waterfall in a Wooded Landscape with a Dead Beech Tree
Also known as: Landscape with a Dead Tree
About the Artwork
Jutting from a dune in the foreground, the massive silvery trunk of a dead tree leads the eye across a waterfall and toward a distant sunlit field where travelers and a dog traverse a sandy path. Partly masked by trees, a ruined building is turned gold by the sun. In Jacob van Ruisdael’s landscapes, dead trees, waterfalls, and ruined buildings were visual expressions of the passage of time. Ruisdael devoted equal attention to the cloud-filled skies looming above the land, creating dramatic patterns of light and shadow and revealing the unseen movements of the wind.
Inscriptions
Signed lower left: "JvRuisdael {JvR in monogram]"
Provenance
Freiherren von Ketteler (first at Schloss Harkotten near Warendorf, probably by mid-eighteenth century; later at Schloss Ehringerfeld near Buren, Westphalia, 1904); J. J. van Leeuwen Boomkamp, Naarden, Holland, 1929; (sale: Sotheby’s London, November 30, 1966, no. 21; to Legatt); [Frederick Mont, New York], sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1967. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 29-December 31, 1967). Dutch Art and Life in the Seventeenth Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 10-September 2, 1973). Masterpieces of World Art from American Museums. National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo (organizer) (September 11-October 17, 1976); Kyoto National Museum (November 2-December 5, 1976). Visions of Landscape: East and West. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 17-March 21, 1982). Time and Transformation in seventeenth-century Dutch Art. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY (organizer) (April 19-June 15, 2005); John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL (August 20-October 30, 2005); Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY (January 15-March 26, 2006).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/29–1682)
- Date
- c. 1660–70
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Framed: 123 x 157 x 9.5 cm (48 7/16 x 61 13/16 x 3 3/4 in.); Unframed: 99.2 x 131 cm (39 1/16 x 51 9/16 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund
- Accession no.
- 1967.63
More by Jacob van Ruisdael in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00000264
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