Answer:
Explanation:
Van Ruisdael specialized in landscape painting and never really digressed from this art genre. He never painted human figures, even the minuscule ones that are present in his landscape and town images. Instead van Ruisdael would ask other artists, most probably from his studio in Amsterdam, to fill in the human figures in his works for him.
In his early years in Haarlem Jacob van Ruisdael painted the natural dunes around his city and the flat woodland. His early offerings show an intense affiliation to nature and the solitary structure and objects against nature's great vastness. This was naturally due to the influence of his uncle, Salomon van Ruysdael, who used solitary objects to create new dimensions and concepts in composition.
Jacob van Ruisdael was also influenced by other fellow Haarlem painters such as Jan van Goyen, Pieter de Molijn, Hercules Segers, Jan van de Velde and Claes Jansz. These artists were deemed 'tonal painters' and despite van Ruisdael's use of strong local color, it is evident that he was inspired by the restrained palettes of these painters.
In his early works, pine forests, waterfalls and stormy skies featured heavily and van Ruisdael's fascination with trees in particular is evident in paintings such as the Landscape with a House in the Grove.
During the 1650s, Jacob van Ruisdael visited Germany and absorbed himself in the natural wonder of the northern landscape and hemisphere. He developed a keen interest in the rugged mountain planes, craggy lands and old abandoned structures. It was here that he drew most inspiration for his later works whereby he created Nordic images of landscapes entirely from memory. The artist's subject matter was not original but rather his interpretation and execution of it was. He was able to add something new to his strongest work; a moral and psychological significance that was appreciated by later generations in particular.
Van Ruisdael's landscapes always conveyed a gloomy, placid atmosphere evoking solitude and dark emotions. Furthermore, his paintings always instilled an overwhelming silence that is best understood through emotions rather than words.
However, his images were not as intense as those of his followers. They were not loud but rather passively elevated the viewer's psychological state. His connection to oncoming storm clouds came to symbolize the oncoming of human emotions and moods. Van Ruisdael used his work to assign personalities to the trees and structures of nature that he presented.
