English

Wheat Fields

ca. 1670
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 615

Twenty-seven views of fields by Ruisdael survive today. In this celebrated example, the artist used the building blocks of land, sky, and sea to create an imposing vision of cultivated nature. On the road before us, a man with a traveler’s pack approaches a woman and child, while the cumulus clouds dominating the sky add their own element of drama. A glimpse of boats at sea on the far left knits this quintessentially Dutch landscape into the wider world.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Wheat Fields
  • Artist: Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, Haarlem 1628/29–1682 Amsterdam)
  • Date: ca. 1670
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 39 3/8 x 51 1/4 in. (100 x 130.2 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913
  • Object Number: 14.40.623
  • Curatorial Department: European Paintings

Audio

Cover Image for 5245. Jacob van Ruisdael, Wheat Fields

5245. Jacob van Ruisdael, Wheat Fields

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NARRATOR: When he works behind the camera, cinematographer Gavin Finney tells stories by using film to capture movement. But what if you’re a seventeenth-century landscapist, Jacob van Ruisdael, and instead you have a paintbrush? Finney and curator Adam Eaker discuss.

ADAM EAKER: So he conveys the ordinariness of the Dutch landscape, and at the same time, he transfigures it through light—through the depiction of the sky—into something really dramatic and extraordinary.

GAVIN FINNEY: He’s picked the moment you’d want to press the shutter on a camera, which is this gap in the clouds illuminating the woman and the child. And they’re right on the edge of a shadow of a cloud. We know these clouds are moving. And in my mind, they’re moving towards us, and I think there’s a spotlight racing towards the viewer. And in the next second, the lady and the child will be in darkness.

NARRATOR: The painted scene, like a moving shot in a film, serves a larger story. It invites us to speculate.

GAVIN FINNEY: The man’s carrying a bag. They’re standing still, the woman and the child—so are they waiting for the man? He’s carrying a bag—has he come off a ship? Is he father, or brother, or husband? What’s the story here? It’s not just figures put in for scale; there’s a human narrative going on here as well, enveloped in this great landscape.

NARRATOR: On the far left, the landscape opens to the sea.

ADAM EAKER: I like to think that Ruisdael included this glimpse of the sea as a way of expanding the horizon—both literally and figuratively—to show a kind of interconnectedness between this humble path and some world outside the frame.

GAVIN FINNEY: When you stand in front of it, you can almost imagine it coming to life.

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