scattered across collections globally, both private and institutional. The most notable collections are at the National Gallery in London, which holds twenty paintings; the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which holds sixteen paintings; the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, which holds nine, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain has four (and two additional paintings attributed to Jacob Isaacksz. van Ruisdael). In the US, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has five Ruisdaels in its collection, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in California has three. On occasion a Ruisdael changes hands. In 2014, Dunes by the Sea was auctioned at Christie's in New York, and realised a price of $1,805,000. Of his surviving drawings, 140 in total, the Rijksmuseum, the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, Dresden's Kupferstich-Kabinett, and the Hermitage each hold significant collections. Ruisdael's rare etchings are spread across institutions. No collection holds a print of each of the thirteen etchings. Of the five unique prints, the British Museum holds two, two are in the Albertina in Vienna, and one is in Amsterdam. Context According to some, Ruisdael and his art should not be considered apart from the context of the incredible wealth and significant changes to the land that occurred during the Dutch Golden Age. In his study on 17th-century Dutch art and culture, Simon Schama remarks that "it can never be overemphasized that the period between 1550 and 1650, when the political identity of an independent Netherlands nation was being established, was also a time of dramatic physical alteration of its landscape". Ruisdael's depiction of nature and emergent Dutch technology are wrapped up in this. Christopher Joby places Ruisdael in the religious context of the Calvinism of the Dutch Republic. He states that landscape painting does conform to Calvin's requirement that only what is visible may be depicted in art, and that landscape paintings such as those of Ruisdael have an epistemological value which provides further support for their use within Reformed Churches. The art historian Yuri Kuznetsov places Ruisdael's art in the context of the war of independence against Spain. Dutch landscape painters "were called upon to make a portrait of their homeland, twice rewon by the Dutch people – first from the sea and later from foreign invaders". Jonathan Israel, in his study of the Dutch Republic, calls the period between 1647 and 1672 the third phase of Dutch Golden Age art, in which wealthy