Mountainous Landscape near Düsseldorf

Gerard van Nijmegen

1790

oil on panel

Rijksmuseum

A horse-drawn wagon crosses a wooden bridge over a rocky stream in a mountainous landscape. A castle ruin is visible on a distant hill, and a large, gnarled tree dominates the right side of the composition. This untamed view of nature anticipates picturesque features of Romanticism. Van Nijmegen, though, was also inspired by 17th-century Dutch painters, such as Jacob van Ruisdael. He had seen the subject of this painting – a landscape with ruins and drovers driving an ox-wagon over a wooden bridge – while travelling along the Rhine in 1788. He described it in his journal.