Lot 86: ATTRIBUTED TO SALOMON VAN RUYSDAEL

ATTRIBUTED TO SALOMON VAN RUYSDAEL 1592 - 1670 RIVER LANDSCAPE WITH A TREE inscribed S.R. and dated 1651 or 1631 black chalk on paper

Otto Naumann, Ltd., New York (as Jan van Goyen)
Acquired from the above, 2005

Despite various recent exhibitions and studies of 17th century Dutch landscape drawings, the drawing style of Salomon van Ruysdael, one of the leading landscape painters of the period, remains relatively undefined. With the exception of the underdrawings detectable in some of his paintings, no drawings can be unequivocally attributed to the artist, so attributions rest largely on comparisons with his paintings. On this basis, the traditional attribution of the present drawing to Ruysdael, though hard to prove, should not be rejected out of hand, particularly since the style cannot easily be related to that of any of the other main artists who were producing paintings of this type of composition during the second quarter of the 17th century.