JOHANNES RUISCHER Landscape with a Castle and Some Houses to the Left, a Large Tree to the Right. Etching. 106x169 mm; 41/4x63/4 inches. Second state (of 2). Ex-collection unknown collector, violet ink stamp with the letter M (not in Lugt). With thread margins or trimmed on the plate mark, trimmed just inside the plate mark left edge. A very good, richly-inked impression of this scarce print.
Whether or not he was a student of Rembrandt's mentor Hercules Seghers, Ruischer (1625-circa 1675) appears to have been in contact with the earlier master. Many of his landscape prints have elements borrowed from Seghers, notably the "steel wool" quality of his foliage, and he often printed his etchings in color on papers with prepared color grounds like Seghers. Ruischer's early landscape drawings from the 1640s/early 1650s, on many of which are inscriptions referring to him as the "young Hercules," show an affinity with Rembrandt's landscapes of the time too. Hollstein 23.
