Wooded Landscape with Shepherd and Flock by a River

An oak stripped bare and split by lightning dominates this canvas, and in front of it lies a birch torn up by its roots. The Museum of Fine Arts calls them reminders of the brute force of nature, set against green meadows where a shepherd drives his sheep along a sunken road by the river. Massive forms like these mark Ruisdael's work of the 1650s, and he painted this large canvas, more than 1.4 metres wide, in the second half of that decade. The rolling hills in the distance, with a church among them, belong to the country along the Dutch-German border, a long way from the flat land around Haarlem.

For roughly two centuries it seems to have stayed in an English country house. The Foljambe family most likely bought it in the late 18th century for Osberton Hall in Nottinghamshire, when most of their collection was formed. By 1998 it had left the family through the London dealer Simon Dickinson, and the collectors Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo gave it to Boston in 2023.