Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael 1628/29-1682 A View of Haarlem and Bleaching Fields ca. 1665-70 Oil on canvas 23-1/2 x 30-5/8 in.
		Haarlem linen had a great reputation in the seventeenth century, and the linen industry was enormously important to the city's economy. Clothing and uncut cloth were bleached in the fields around the city in a process that took several months. Ruisdael, one of the most important seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painters, completed about fifteen views of Haarlem showing the linen-bleaching fields. In this richly textured canvas, as in other landscapes of the subject, the artist arranges the buildings and rows of linen to lead the eye diagonally through alternating areas of shadow and light. At the horizon is St. Bavo's, a famous church flanked to the east and west by bell towers. Ruisdael was buried in the church upon his death in 1682.
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