Salomon van Ruysdael - AN ESTUARY SCENE WITH A KAAG CLOSE-HAULED IN A LIGHT BREEZE AND OTHER SMALL VESSELS BEYOND AN ESTUARY SCENE WITH A KAAG RUNNING BEFORE A LIGHT BREEZE, AND OTHERS SIMILAR BEYOND

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Salomon van Ruysdael
NAARDEN 1600/3 - 1670 HAARLEM
AN ESTUARY SCENE WITH A KAAG CLOSE-HAULED IN A LIGHT BREEZE AND OTHER SMALL VESSELS BEYOND AN ESTUARY SCENE WITH A KAAG RUNNING BEFORE A LIGHT BREEZE, AND OTHERS SIMILAR BEYOND
Quantity: 2
both signed with initials: SVR in monogram
a pair, both oil on oak panel

each: 11.7 by 15.7 cm.; 4 5/8 by 6 1/4 in.
The two estuary scenes forming this unpublished true pair of pictures are among Salomon van Ruysdael's smallest-scale works, and are done with an unmatched freedom of the brush.  They were clearly painted with immense speed: entirely wet-in-wet and without hesitation or revision, and they are a remarkable testament to Ruysdael's genius.

Stechow, who was unaware of the present pair, lists a handful of very small-scale estuary scenes.1  One such, in the Harold Samuel Collection, The Guildhall, London, was thought by Peter Sutton to be Ruysdael's smallest-scale work, although it is a little larger than the present pair.2  Sutton dated the Samuel picture to the 1640s, whereas Stechow is inclined to place very freely-painted small-scale works rather later.  For example, he dated circa 1660-62 a "skizzenhaft" estuary scene featuring a close-hauled kaag towing a rowing boat very similar to the first of the present pair and almost as freely painted (unsigned, oil on panel, 18.6 by 23.3 cm.); sold at Sotheby's in London, 3 July 1997, lot 180.3
It is fairly certain that many pairs of estuary scenes by Salomon van Ruysdael are not true pendants but rather paintings of similar size paired up.  Peter Sutton discussed this question in the catalogue of the 1994 Madrid exhibition, and concluded that "there are at least two pairs of paintings ... which were conceived by the artist as pendants".4  The present two paintings were also undoubtedly conceived by Ruysdael as a pair, and may well have been done on sections of the same plank of oak.  
1.  See W. Stechow, Salomon van Ruysdael, Berlin 1975, p. 113, nos. 295A-300.
2.  Idem, no. 295A; P.C. Sutton, Dutch & Flemish Seventeenth-century paintings. The Harold Samuel Collection, Cambridge 1992, pp. 179-81, no. 612, reproduced in colour plate 61.
3. Stechow, op. cit., no. 300 (wrongly as on canvas).
4.  P.C. Sutton, The Golden Age of Dutch Landscape Painting, exhibition catalogue, Madrid 1994, p. 218, under no. 62.

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