A Forest Marsh with Travelers on a Bank

Jacob van Ruisdael is among the most highly regarded landscape artists of Holland’s Golden Age. He was a prolific painter and made about a dozen etchings. In The Travelers, he wielded the etching needle with exceptional freedom and expressive force, a departure from the delicacy normally seen in the work of his forebears and contemporaries. As is evident in this brilliant impression, the light is diffuse but infinitely varied despite the simplicity of his two-bite etching technique. Ruisdael’s treatment of the foliage animates the gnarled trees of the swampy lowland scene. Though the title seems to emphasize the human presence, it is really just a means to distinguish this plate from other landscapes, and one has to search a moment just to find the woman, two men, and dog, who skirt the water’s edge.