1701. LANDSCAPE WITH WATERMILL.
Allart van Everdingen (Dutch: 1612-1675).
This painter, an elder contemporary and precursor of Ruysdael, was born at Alkmaar. He studied successively under Roelandt Savery at Utrecht and Pieter Molyn at Haarlem. In a voyage which he made to the Baltic he was shipwrecked on the coast of Norway, and he remained for some time in that country. On returning to his native land he reproduced the scenes among which he had dwelt—torrents edged around by huge firs springing out from sombre masses of rock, and throwing their spray into large stretches of transparent water. A large number of studies from nature remain from his hand, and these he composed into pictures. His works had some vogue in Holland, where they provided a counter-attraction to the views of the softer and more smiling country which the "Italianisers" were offering to the public. If Ruysdael did not himself go to Norway, it must have been Everdingen's Norwegian scenes that inspired him. Everdingen's "colouring is simple and pure, his touch broad and facile, and it is evident that every object in his pictures was studied from nature." He was also an accomplished etcher. He died at Amsterdam.