This recent addition to The Frick Collection—a gift from Trustee Kate Feldstein in memory of Martin Feldstein—is a dramatically lit view of the Dutch dunes. In the 1620s, Salomon van Ruysdael and a group of other young artists active in Haarlem took their inspiration from their immediate surroundings, turning their attention to the local landscape instead of conjuring imaginative views of distant lands.

In this relatively small work, Ruysdael evokes the sandy hills that separate Haarlem from the North Sea, a dirt road guiding viewers alongside a collapsed hayrick and a somewhat dilapidated farmhouse that, judging from the whiff of smoke coming from its chimney, provides shelter.

The fluidity of brushwork and muted palette heighten the anticipation of a coming storm, enhancing the stark contrasts between light and dark. Threatening clouds sweep in from the right, their shadows catching up with a resting traveler and about to envelope the house. Ruysdael masterfully captures both the beauty and the harshness of the countryside.

In the lower right corner, just below the rickety wooden fence, the painter inscribed his name and the date, 1628. This is one of Ruysdael’s earliest known works.