Two Water Mills with an Open Sluice, also known as Two Watermills and an Open Sluice, Two Undershot Water Mills with an Open Sluice is a 1653 painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Jacob van Ruisdael. It is in the collection of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.[1]
The painting shows two working undershot water mills, with the major one being half-timbered with a cob-facade construction, tie beams, and vertical plank gable. This is characteristic of the water mills in the Bentheim area in Germany, to where Ruisdael had travelled in the early 1650s.[1] This painting is one of six known variations on this theme and the only one that is dated.[2]
Although other Western artists had depicted water mills before, Ruisdael was the first to make it the focal subject in a painting.[3] Meindert Hobbema, Ruisdael's pupil, started working on the water mills subject in the 1660s. Today Hobbema is more strongly associated with water mills than his teacher.[4]
The painting is known by various names. The painting is called Two Water Mills with an Open Sluice in Seymour Slive's 2001 catalogue raisonné of Ruisdael, catalogue number 119.[4] In his 2011 book on Ruisdael's mills and water mills Slive calls it Two Undershot Water Mills with an Open Sluice.[1] The Getty Museum calls it Two Watermills and an Open Sluice on their website, object number 82.PA.18.[2]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b c Slive 2011, p. 56.
- ^ a b "Two Watermills and an Open Sluice". Getty Museum. Retrieved 7 December 2015.
- ^ Slive 2011, p. 54.
- ^ a b Slive 2001, p. 130.
Bibliography
edit- Slive, Seymour (2001). Jacob van Ruisdael: a Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08972-1.
- Slive, Seymour (2011). Jacob van Ruisdael: Windmills and Water Mills. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. ISBN 978-1-60606-055-1.