River Landscape with a View of Naarden

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

In this river scene, Salomon van Ruysdael applied his reduced color palette with an impressive array of techniques to render the atmosphere of approaching rain. He created rippling waters with thinly applied, striated strokes of steelblue paint that reveal the pink preparatory ground below. He invoked the breeze fluttering through the leaves by varying light green and brown paint in quickly stippled strokes of a small brush. Such “tonal” landscapes became popular in the Netherlands, in part because they could capture the effects of the area’s capricious weather.

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