View of Sailing Boats on a Lake

In Holland around 1650 much of the traffic between towns went by water, and that is what Salomon van Ruysdael puts on this lake. A broad-bellied vessel with a red pennant at its masthead heels under grey sails, its crew gathered on deck, a second sail follows, and closer to us a few men in a skiff are hauling in a net. On the far shore you can pick out a windmill and a church tower, low against the water. The panel is only about 36 centimetres tall, and the sky fills most of it, clouds stacked on a diagonal above a very low horizon. In places he left the reddish-brown ground uncovered, and it glows through the clouds and keeps them moving. The painting hung here on loan for 15 years before it was bequeathed to the museum in 1987.