By Permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery
By Permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery
Number 220 in the Dulwich Gallery, listed as 'Salvator Rosa Landscape with Figures' in Clarke's guide of 1842, is now catalogued as being in the manner of Rosa.
Cook and Wedderburn ( Works, 3.376n) call it 'Mountainous Landscape with a River, now attributed to school of Rosa; no longer exhibited in the gallery.'
Rosa's clouds and skies and Rosa's rocks and mountains form key elements in Ruskin's depreciation of Rosa, and Ruskin relies heavily on this painting to illustrate what he considers Rosa's lack of truth in his painting of both. The criticisms of mountains and the clouds are essentially the same as the objections that Ruskin raises to the mechanical painting of water in the work of Canaletto; they are 'unscientific' and they are false to nature.
The description of the clouds as 'cauliflower-like' has a parallel in the reference to the 'cauliflower breakers' of weaker artists at MP I:119, and Ruskin comments on the 'Covent Garden' school of art criticism at MP I:206.
There are references to this picture at MP I:227, MP I:236, MP I:237, MP I:290, and MP I:308.
Salvator Rosa 1615-73
Mountainous Landscape n.d.
Oil on canvas, 48.9x66cm
Further Comments: This picture is ascribed to the school of Salvator Rosa and although it is owned by the Dulwich Picture Gallery, it is no longer exhibited.
Collection: Dulwich Picture Gallery, London