Jacob van Ruisdael (c. 1629 – 10 March 1682) – Dutch painter

Jacob van Ruisdael also known as Jacob van Ruysdael son of the impoverished Mennonite framemaker, art dealer, and painter Isaack van Ruisdael was born in Naarden, at which time his family’s surname was De Gooyer. After the death of Jacob’s grandfather Jacob Jansz de Gooyer, the furniture maker, in 1616, his father and two uncles changed the family name to Van Ruysdael after the country estate ‘Ruysdael’ (or Ruisschendaal) near De Gooyer’s hometown Blaricum.

Ruisdael's teacher is unknown. He appears to have been strongly influenced by other contemporary local Haarlem landscapists, most notably Cornelis Vroom and Allart van Everdingen.

Jacob van Ruisdael’s earliest works, dated 1646, were made when he was only seventeen or eighteen.

From 1650 to 1653 he traveled extensively in the Netherlands and the neighboring parts of western Germany. About 1655 he settled in Amsterdam, of which he became a free citizen in 1659. Ruisdael lived and worked in Amsterdam for the rest of his life.

Jacob van Ruisdael was often regarded as one of the greatest Dutch landscape painters. Among the greatest and most influential Dutch artists of the seventeenth century, Ruisdael was also the most versatile of landscapists, painting virtually every type of landscape subject.

Jacob van Ruisdael explored a range of landscape motifs in his work, including forest scenes, seascapes, beach scenes, and panoramic landscapes. In Bridge with a Sluice, Ruisdael made an ordinary object monumental by making it larger than all the other elements in the painting, thereby calling attention to its use and placement in the countryside.

Jacob van Ruisdael (c. 1629 – 10 March 1682) – Dutch painter