Landscapes on the Window Sill

 

Still lives and landscape paintings do have a lot in common.  For one, books about them amiably share space on my window sill, equally exposed to the spring light filtering through the curtains.

More to the point, they both do invite contemplation - not needing a story to unfold, nor showing a human character to be assessed. They just let the self quietly watch, observe and love its surroundings.

To my great joy I recently found another book on Jacob van Ruisdael ("Windmills and Water Mills" by Seymour Slive) to complement  the old The Hague catalogue (pictured) that  I once picked up in a second hand bookshop.    

I have vivid & happy memories of the spacious Van Ruisdael paintings I could see over the years in continental European museums. So in this new book I discovered with all the more wonderment  pictures of paintings in UK and US collections I had never seen before.

Look, how Van Ruisdael paints this man in a red jacket on a background of silvery greens,  anticipating Corot’s happy red & shimmering grey chromaticism. (see: Two Undershot Water Mills with an Open Sluice  )

 And there, what an amazing riverscape –  like a busy , industrious vedute painted by an Italian. (see: Panoramic view of the river Amstel looking toward Amsterdam )