Ruisdael's mother was Isaack van Ruisdael's first wife, whose name is unknown, or his second wife, Maycken Cornelisdochter. Isaack and Maycken married on 12 November 1628. Ruisdael's teacher is also unknown. It is often assumed Ruisdael studied with his father and uncle, but there is no evidence for this. He appears to have been strongly influenced by other contemporary local Haarlem landscapists, most notably Cornelis Vroom and Allart van Everdingen. The earliest date that appears on a Ruisdael painting and etching is 1646. Two years after this date he was admitted to membership of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. By this time landscape paintings were as popular as history paintings in Dutch households, though at the time of Ruisdael's birth, history paintings appeared far more frequently. This growth in popularity of landscapes continued throughout Ruisdael's career. Around 1657, Ruisdael moved to Amsterdam, by then a prosperous city which was likely to have offered a bigger market for his work. His fellow Haarlem painter Allaert van Everdingen had already moved to Amsterdam and found a market there. On 17 June 1657 he was baptized in Ankeveen, near Naarden. Ruisdael lived and worked in Amsterdam for the rest of his life. In 1668, his name appears as a witness to the marriage of Meindert Hobbema, his only registered pupil, a painter whose works have, by some, been confused with Ruisdael's own. For a landscape artist, it seems Ruisdael travelled relatively little: to Blaricum, Egmond aan Zee, and Rhenen in the 1640s, with Nicolaes Berchem to Bentheim and Steinfurt just across the border in Germany in 1650, and possibly with Hobbema across the German border again in 1661, via the Veluwe, Deventer and Ootmarsum. Despite Ruisdael's numerous Norwegian landscapes, there is no record of him having travelled to Scandinavia. There is some speculation that Ruisdael was also a doctor. In 1718, his biographer Houbraken reports that he studied medicine and performed surgery in Amsterdam. Archival records of the 17th century show the name "Jacobus Ruijsdael" on a list of Amsterdam doctors, albeit crossed out, with the added remark that he earned his medical degree on 15 October 1676 in Caen, northern France. Various art historians have speculated that this was, in all probability, a case of mistaken identity. Pieter Scheltema suggests it was Ruisdael's cousin who appeared on the record. The Ruisdael expert Seymour Slive argues that the spelling "uij" is not