Salomon Van Ruysdael Biography | Oil Paintings.

Salomon van Ruysdael taught the most famous member of the family, his son the landscape painter Jacob Salomonz van Ruysdael, and uncle of Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruisdael. After his father’s death in 1616 at the age of fourteen, Salomon and two of his brothers, Isaack and Jacob, changed the family name from de Gooyer to Van Ruysdael after the country estate ‘Ruysdael’.

Salomon van Ruysdael was the son of a woodworker who specialized in making fancy ebony frames for mirrors and paintings. His father sent his son Salomon to learn Latin and medicine, but he became a landscape painter instead. Salomon van Ruysdael joined the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke in 1623, and he became a follower of Jan Porcellis his initial early paintings were impacted by Esaias van de Velde.

A prolific painter, Salomon van Ruysdael concentrated for the duration of his life on waterway and estuary scenes, his earliest dated example is of 1626 although he did not sign them so often. His earlier paintings are unassuming in theme and simple in color, his later works becoming more detailed.

Salomon van Ruysdael invented a method of creating sculpted ornaments that when polished, looked like polished marble. These were quite popular as a decoration on chests and picture frames, and he was quite successful with it until the secret of their manufacture was discovered and widely copied.

His paintings of the 1640s helped lay the foundation for the “classical” period of Dutch landscape painting that followed, led by a generation of artists that included his nephew Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruisdael, Meindert Hobbema, and Aelbert Cuyp. Salomon van Ruysdael was one of the main pioneers of landscape painting ushering in the remarkable “tonal” naturalistic landscapes that are the hallmark of early Dutch realism.

Recently, his oil on canvas painting Skaters on the Frozen River Lek, the Town of Vianen Beyond sold at auction for US$ 1,445,000.

Art Movement: Dutch Golden Age.
Artists Influencing Salomon van Ruysdael: Jacob Salomonz van Ruysdael, Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruisdael, Meindert Hobbema, and Aelbert Cuyp.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.