Landscape with a Wooded Ravine 

Anthonie Waterloo created this drawing of a landscape with a wooded ravine using pen and brown ink with gray wash. It presents an opportunity to consider the institutional and social forces shaping artistic production in the Dutch Golden Age. Waterloo, along with his contemporaries, were instrumental in establishing landscape as a discrete genre, reflecting a burgeoning sense of national identity tied to the land. The proliferation of landscape imagery coincided with the rise of a powerful merchant class, who became major patrons of the arts, supporting artists outside of the traditional patronage systems tied to the church or aristocracy. This drawing, with its close attention to the ravine, reflects a broader cultural interest in the natural world. To fully understand this drawing, scholars consult period documents, artists' biographies, and social histories, revealing how artistic expression is always entwined with the social and institutional contexts of its time.