The Horse Market in Valkenburg

Apart from Pieter de Molyn and Jan van Goyen, it was precisely Salomon van Ruysdael who contributed most to the original concept of the Haarlem landscape painting. The basis of his numerous works, sober in coloration, was the depiction of a road running through a softly undulating landscape. In this painting, he combined the landscape concept with a genre scene. A horse market was an important event for the artist´s contemporaries. The painter brilliantly captured the lively dealings among the rustics, their expectation, them standing around or haggling. The whole was thoughtfully shaded by alternating the dark and lit parts.