Cottage at the Top of a Hill
c. 1660
Medium
Etching in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 18.6 × 26.8 cm (7 3/8 × 10 9/16 in.); Sheet: 19.6 × 27.7 cm (7 3/4 × 10 15/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
32753
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The renowned landscape artist Jacob van Ruisdael could have been called a portrait painter of trees, as evidenced by the gnarled, ancient example at the center of this dramatic, detailed etching. Eschewing grand, Italianate landscapes for the minutia of the Dutch Republic, Ruisdael was a trendsetter in numerous landscape genres, including woodland, river, waterfall, beach, and winter scenes. In addition to fellow Dutch artists, he also influenced contemporaries in Germany such as Jonas Umbach, a...
About the Artist
Jacob van Ruisdael · 1623–1682
Jacob van Ruisdael (c. 1629–1682) was a Dutch painter and etcher who is widely regarded as the greatest landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age and one of the supreme landscape artists in Western art. Born in Haarlem, he was trained by his father, the frame-maker and painter Isaack van Ruisdael, and by his uncle, the landscape painter Salomon van Ruysdael. He became a member of the Haarlem Guild...