h a considerable number of his best
works.

JACOB RUISDAEL (born at Haarlem 1628, died there 1682) is supposed to
have developed under the influence of a school there that was opposing
Van Goyen's tone treatment by local colour. Though not always the most
charming, Ruisdael is certainly the greatest and the most profound of
the Dutch landscape painters. His wide expanses of sky, earth or sea,
with their tender gradations of aerial perspective, diversified here and
there by alternations of sunshine and shadow, attract us as much by the
pathos as by the picturesqueness of their character. His scenes of
mountainous districts with foaming waterfalls; or bare piles of rock and
sombre lakes are imbued with a feeling of melancholy. Ruisdael's work
may be well studied in the six examples at Hertford House, and the
fourteen in the National Gallery. Among his finer works in Continental
collections the following are some of those selected by Kugler for
description. At the Hague is one of his wide expanses--a view of the
country around Haarlem, the town itself looking small on the horizon,
under a lofty expanse of cloudy sky in the foreground a bleaching-ground
and some houses reminding us, by the manner in which they are
introduced, of Hobbema. The prevailing tone is cool, the sky singularly
beautiful, and the execution wonderfully delicate. A flat country with a
road leading to a village, and fields with wheatsheaves, is in the
Dresden Gallery. This is temperate in colouring and beautifully lighted.
Equally fine is an extensive view over a hilly but bare country, through
which a river runs; in the Louvre. The horseman and beggar on a bridge
are by Wouvermans: here the grey-greenish harmony of the tone is in fine
accordance with the poetic grandeur of the subject. A hill covered with
oak woods, with a peasant hastening to a hut to escape the gathering
shower, is in the Munich Gallery. The golden warmth of the trees and
ground, and the contrast between the deep clear chiaroscuro and soft
rain-clouds, and the bright gleam of sunshine, render this picture one
of the finest by this master.

The peculiar charm which is seen in Holland by the combination of lofty
trees and calm water is fully represented in the following works:--_The
Chase_; in the Dresden Gallery. Here in the still water in the
foreground--through which a stag-hunt (by Adrian van de Velde) is
passing--clouds, warm with morning sunlight, appear reflected. In this
pict