Risdael Blue Poem by gershon hepner

Matisse, the master of all color,
is far more thrilling, you might think,
than Jacob Ruisdael, who chose duller
colors that don’t make you blink.
Yet in Ruisdael’s landscapes he
would paint some patches of sky blue,
symbols eyes no longer see
once dark clouds obscure their view.

When we do not have around us
technicolored majesty,
dark approaches may confound us
in the threadbare tapestry
of discolored lives that fade,
graying slowly in the night,
sheltering in that dark shade
we had shunned when we chose light.

Artists who proclaim the truth
nuance it by choice of color,
bright hues illuminating youth,
shunning duns that make it duller.
Chosen in the march of time,
covered with a cloudy varnish,
the surfaces will seem sublime
till, aging, they begin to tarnish.

This poem transforms an earlier one called “Caprice”:

Matisse, the master of all color,
is far more thrilling, one might think,
than Jacob Ruisdael, who chose duller
colors that don’t make you blink,
yet in every landscape he
painted patches of sky blue,
symbol of what eyes can’t see
when dark clouds obscure our view.
Though there may not be around us
technicolored majesty,
darkness never should confound us,
in the threadbare tapestry
of the lives that we have woven;
when we cannot see Matisse
blemishes become disproven,
patched and colored by caprice.

Holland Cotter reviews an exhibition of landscapes by Jacob van Rusidael at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (“Views of the Land Where the Dramatic Blues of the sky Matter Most, ” NYT, October 28,2005) :

Color is memory, like scent and sound. 'Ah, there it is, 'Ruisdael blue.' ' My friend and I would look at each other and smile on a rambling art tour of Europe. No need to comment. We both had the same thought, felt the same lift. We remembered the color from other museums, and other tours, maybe with a different friend, in New York, or Paris, or London. Always, the encounter was a semi-surprise. We would wander into the Dutch painting galleries and see on a far wall a smallish landscape by the 17th-century painter Jacob van Ruisdael. From across a room, the details were vague, except for one. Each picture had a sky full of clouds through which shone this color, this ozone-azure, cool and clear, a high, vibrato-less note. It became a leitmotif of a trip, our song of the road.
You'll see that patch of sky often, and in varying quantities and intensities, in 'Jacob van Ruisdael: Dutch Master of Landscape' at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And you'll see many clouds - cirrus, stratus, cumulonimbus - in an art that is as much about hard, descriptive facts as it is about hard-to-describe feelings.
To say that color plays a significant role in Ruisdael's art may seem odd, if your idea of color is Matisse. Ruisdael, who was born in Haarlem around 1628, is one of the most imposingly somber of artists. Few others have produced landscapes that match his in the sense of moral weight. His 'Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede' is a dark monument to controlled power. His famous 'Jewish Cemetery, ' which is in the show, is Kaddish in paint. In such pictures, he was a Romantic before Romanticism, which is one reason his real fame began not in his lifetime, but in the 18th and 19th centuries in England, Germany and North America. John Constable, compulsive recorder of weather, revered Ruisdael's observational probity. The Hudson River School painters infused their frontier Edens with something of his theatrical grandeur. That his landscapes are grand is remarkable, given the material he was working with. England had its Windermere, America its Rockies. Holland had duney flatness, with the occasional steeple poking up. But Ruisdael found this sufficient for starters: he painted what was in front of him and invented what was not.

10/28/05,5/22/07,11/4/09