Ruisdael, Jacob (Isaakszoon) van

also spelled Ruysdael

(born 1628/29, Haarlem, Neth.—buried March 14, 1682, Amsterdam) Dutch landscape painter. He was probably trained by his father, a framemaker and artist. He was enrolled in the Haarlem painters' guild in 1648 and settled in Amsterdam c. 1656. He was a remarkably versatile artist, and some 700 paintings have been attributed to him. Whereas earlier Dutch artists used trees merely as decorative devices, Ruisdael made them the subject of his paintings and imbued them with forceful personalities through vigorous brushwork and strong colours in the Baroque style. The emotional force of his work is evident in the famous Jewish Cemetery (c. 1660), where three tombstones crumble to ruin amid an ever-renewing nature. His late works include numerous panoramas of the flat Dutch countryside, in which a low, distant horizon is dominated by a vast, clouded sky. He is often considered the greatest Dutch landscape painter of all time.

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