Wheat Fields by Jacob van Ruisdael - ca. 1670 - 100 x 130.2 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art Wheat Fields by Jacob van Ruisdael - ca. 1670 - 100 x 130.2 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wheat Fields

oil paint and sand on canvas • 100 x 130.2 cm
  • Jacob van Ruisdael - c. 1629 - March 10, 1682 Jacob van Ruisdael ca. 1670

This large canvas of about 1670 is Ruisdael's most ambitious view of grain fields, a subject he treated frequently. The monumental design, with its centralized recession into space, might have been intended for a particular location, perhaps above a mantelpiece. During the seventeenth century, paintings of this size were usually hung high.