Jacob van Ruisdael, A Pool surrounded by Trees

There’s an air of stillness in this large painting that is unusual in Jacob van Ruisdael’s work. The clouds hang as if suspended over the forest and the leaves of the trees – often restless in his other pictures – are quiet, though by no means lifeless. Reflections tremble a little in the water, and although the woods seem dark and sombre, the colours in the picture are rich and lustrous.

The deep greens of the oaks that form a screen across the space are given life by the contrast of the gold leaves of the birch saplings growing out of the pool and the silvery bark of the dead tree on the right. Bushes push out of the shadows glowing with amber and gold, and nut-brown lichen grows on the fallen branch in the earthy water. A sudden view of stark, grey rock through the trees beyond the bank, where the clouds are at their heaviest, doesn‘t affect the tranquillity of the scene. Only the big white dog splashing through the shallows after the almost invisible hare does that – but it’ll soon be gone.

Also almost hidden are the two owners of the dog; they stand on the rise under the large oak, one above the other. One looks up at his companion and points at the dog with one arm. A single fleck of white paint suggests that there’s another dog at his feet, waiting its turn to run. The twisted shape of the oak’s trunk shows van Ruisdael’s fascination with nature’s many forms, but also his attention to detail in composition: the double ‘S’ bend of the tree serves to prevent the other vertical tree trunks from turning still to static. The little pond and its surroundings may be dark and perhaps a little melancholy, but there is still growth and fruitfulness and, with the occasional ripple, a suggestion of abundant life under the water. There are tiny, new reeds growing round the rotting tree trunk, and the pale spheres of waterlily buds sitting on their mossy green pads.

Van Ruisdael was probably the greatest of the Dutch seventeenth-century landscape painters. Prolific and successful, his paintings were highly sought after during his lifetime and his popularity never waned. This painting was once in the large collection of the nineteenth-century prime minister, Sir Robert Peel. A companion described him turning his head to look at it and wrote that it was ‘as if its cool, dewy verdure, its deep seclusion, its transparent waters stealing through the glade had sent refreshment to his very soul’.