View of Haarlem

On the 31st of May 1865, less than three months after the death of the Duc de Morny, the statesman who had presided over France's lower chamber under the Second Empire, his pictures were sold in Paris. Lot 75 was this small view of Haarlem by Jacob van Ruisdael. It went to Paul Demidoff, heir to a Russian fortune built on Ural ironworks, who put it up for sale again in 1869. At that sale it was described as painted on a wooden panel and signed with a monogram at the lower left. By the time it reappeared at a Paris auction in 1933, the catalogue said it had possibly been transferred from panel to canvas, a delicate operation restorers once used to rescue paint from a failing support. Today it is listed as oil on canvas, 35.6 by 40 centimetres. Haarlem, Ruisdael's home town, lies low on the horizon at the left, with farm buildings among trees on the right and open fields between, and the museum dates the picture to about 1670 to 1675, late in his life. In the 20th century it belonged to Raoul Dastrac in the small town of Aiguillon in south-western France, and then to his widow. In 1997 a London dealer sold it to Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, collectors in Massachusetts, and it is in Boston as their promised gift to the museum.