EMANUEL MURANT | River landscape with a ruined cottage and a horse-drawn carriage on a path

Mrs. Borough, London, before 1964;

With Colnaghi, London, 1964;

Possibly Dr. Vitale Bloch, June 1964 (according to the RKD);

With Julius Böhler, Munich, November 1969;

With Galerie Kurt J. Müllenmeister, Solingen, 1969;

Carl Schünemann, Bremen, 1974;

From whom acquired in 1975.

K.J. Müllenmeister, Meer und Land im Licht des 17. Jahrhunderts. Seestücke und Flußlandschaften niederländischer Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts in privaten Sammlungen, vol. I, Bremen 1973, p. 150, reproduced;

S. Slive and H. R. Hoetink, Jacob van Ruisdael, Amsterdam and New York 1981, p. 184;

H.-J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des. 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. 3, Landschaften und Seestücke, Münster/Hamburg/London 2001, pp. 192-95, cat. no. 48, reproduced in colour;

S. Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael - A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings and Etchings, London and New Haven 2001, p. 654, under cat. no. dub120, note 2;

W. Pijbes, M. Aarts, M. J. Bok et al, At Home in the Golden Age, exh. cat., Zwolle 2008, p. 77, cat. no. 63, reproduced in colour.

Little is known of Emanuel Murant’s life, though the Dutch biographer Arnold Houbraken states that he was a pupil of Philips Wouwerman in Haarlem, and it is also thought that he knew Jan van der Heyden and Jan van de Cappelle. Murant specialised in village scenes and ruined farm buildings, executed with minute accuracy, a trait that may have developed through friendship with Van der Heyden. Indeed, Houbraken writes that one can 'count the stones of the masonry' ('dat men de steenen van 't muurwerk konde tellen') in Murant's paintings, certainly true of the buildings in the present work, which reward close scrutiny. This composition relates to a drawing of a ruined cottage by Jacob van Ruisdael that may have served as a preparatory study for a now lost painting.¹ In addition to the present example by Murant, other versions are known, all with variations in staffage, including a canvas in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.²

1 https://www.themorgan.org/drawings/item/247446. 

2 https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-281.