They most probably were his teachers. Similarly at this early stage of his career he absorbed some influence of contemporary landscape painters in Haarlem such as Jan van Goyen, Allart van Everdingen, Cornelis Vroom and Jacob van Mosscher. We intend to illustrate this with a selection of eight earlier works by these artists. However, there are already some remarkable differences to be found. Ruisdael developed a more dramatic effect in the rendering of the different textures of the trees, bushes and plants and the bold presentation of one large clump of oak trees leaning over with its gnarled and twisted trunks and branches highlighted against the dark cloudy sky.
Strong lighting hits a sandy patch or a sandy road creating dramatic colour contrasts.
These elements characterize his early works from 1646 till 1650. It is our intention to focus on the revolutionary development of Ruisdael as an artist inventing new heroic-dramatic schemes in composition, colour contrast and light effects. Our aim is to follow this deveopment with a selection of early signed and dated paintings which are key works and and show these different aspects in a a series of most splendid examples, f.i. Several examples from a private collection in Vienna, one in London, one in Brunswick, one in Rotterdam and two in St. Petersburg will illustrate this spectacular change. After his trip to Blenheim and his move to Amsterdam Ruisdael achieved an impressive control of light effects, composition and accentuation of bold, compact forms in a rich scala of vivid ocre, brown and green colours.