Dunes by the Sea

Jacob van Ruisdael

National Gallery of Art

Water laps at a curving shoreline in front of a steep sandy dune carpeted in grass, shrubs, and trees in this horizontal landscape painting. The dune takes up the lower right quadrant of the composition. A few broken tree trunks are overgrown with vines and plants across the top and down the sloping side of the dune facing us. A red brick wall cuts through the vegetation up the side of the dune and disappears into the shrubbery at the top. The twisting branches and canopies of three large trees reach into the upper right quadrant of the composition. The vegetation stops abruptly along the sheer edge of the dune where it faces the water. The land curves like a backward capital letter C so it almost reaches the left edge of the painting along the horizon, which comes a quarter of the way up the composition. A cow and three more animals, perhaps sheep or more cows, graze or lie on a grassy mound in the distance, and sailboats line the horizon in the deep distance. White ripples swirl in the steel-blue water. The artist signed and dated the lower center, “J Ruisdael . 1648.”