The Old Castle

Although not signed, this painting is entirely consistent in execution with works by Murant that bear his usual inscription, "E.M." Few of his pictures are dated, and his small known oeuvre allows little more than chronological conjecture. The subject, composition, and comparisons with works by other Dutch artists, especially Jan van der Heyden, suggest a tentative dating between about 1665 and 1680.

The painting depicts part of a ruined Late Medieval castle of a type common in the Netherlands. The stair tower is crowned by a weather vane, but there are no signs of recent habitation. (Many Dutch castles were ruined in the late sixteenth century, during the war with Spain.) A farmhouse nestles near a stand of trees in the center of the composition. To the left, a woman with a large basket of washing on her head comes down a pathway. A man on the grass points in the direction of the traveler over the hill to the right. In the center foreground, a woman plays with a dog, and a boy behind her also points in the approximate direction of the wayfarer. Each male figure carries a stick. The tower of a church and a glimpse of a few other buildings appear beyond the sunlit field in the right background.

Most remarkable in this painting is the minute description of brickwork on the castle, relieved here and there by metal braces, isolated outbreaks of foliage, and various apertures. Examination with a microscope reveals that all the masonry was painted freehand with a tiny brush, probably with the help of a magnifying glass. The irregular horizontal bands are hatched by vertical ticks, many of them white or white and dark gray together, which creates the impression of daylight catching the edges of bricks.

A similar painting by Murant is a view of a village bordered by a stream and pastureland, with a narrow brick house at the left. The panel, close in size to this one, was on the art market in 1968. There are a few broadly comparable compositions by Van der Heyden, for example, the undated Houses at the Edge of a Town (formerly Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and A Pavilion near Goudestein on the Vecht, dated 1666 (art market, 1938). Murant painted impressive passages of brickwork before Van der Heyden did the same, but the meticulous degree to which he defined the masonry in this picture strikes one as a response to Van der Heyden's seemingly obsessive standard.

The subject of ruins in Dutch art has recently been explored. In Murant's picture, a contemporary viewer might have discovered evidence that while man's most durable monuments pass away in time, life goes on. But the same viewer would have come to these conclusions on a walk in the country, and that common pleasure, both here and in his work overall, is Murant's essential subject.

[2017; adapted from Liedtke 2007]

[Durand-Ruel, Paris and New York, until 1892; sold for $600 to Davis]; Theodore M. Davis, Newport, R.I. (1892–d. 1915; his estate, on loan to The Met, 1915–30)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," September 18, 2007–January 6, 2008, no catalogue.

H[orst]. Gerson in Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler. Ed. Hans Vollmer. Vol. 25, Leipzig, 1931, p. 281.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 71.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 328, ill.

Walter Liedtke with archival research by Piet Bakker. "Murant and His Milieu: A Biography of Emanuel Murant, the 'Rustic Forerunner' of Jan van der Heyden." In His Milieu: Essays on Netherlandish Art in Memory of John Michael Montias. Ed. A[my]. Golahny et al. Amsterdam, 2006, pp. 241–42, figs. 3–4 (overall and detail).

Walter Liedtke. Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2007, vol. 1, pp. 499–500, no. 127, colorpl. 127, fig. 116 (detail), tentatively dates it between 1665 and 1680.