Jacob van Ruisdael

at the Royal Academy, London
to 4 June 2006



This exhibition has been jointly organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Jacob van Ruisdael was one of the greatest painters of the Golden Age of Dutch painting. He was born into abject poverty in 1628 or 1629 and much of his life is shrouded in mystery. Raised in Haarlem he moved to Amsterdam and died there in 1682.

In the course of his life Ruisdael broke with many of the traditions of Dutch painting and became a figure of great influence. He is celebrated for faithfully recording nature while responding to it imaginatively. His works are also considered to be fine meditations on human experience in a world shaped by constant cycles of growth and decay.

Ruisdael's impact can be seen in the Barbizon School of France, the American Hudson River School, and in the work of John Constable, England's own leading lanscape painter. To coincide with this exhibition the John Madejski Fine Rooms have been hung with a selection of landscape paintings from the Royal Academy's Permanent Collection. These works can be seen free of charge during Jacob van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape.