Landscape with Bridge and Ruins

Flinck signed and dated this small panel in 1637, when he was in his early twenties and fresh from training under Rembrandt in Amsterdam. Landscapes are rare in his work, and signed ones rarer still. A road climbs past a ruined tower and a cluster of old houses, a man and his dog walk ahead of a cart, and heavy cloud rolls over a wide flat country, with light breaking through low on the horizon. The mood comes from his teacher, probably by way of the master's drawings. The Louvre also suggests that the influence ran back the other way, and that the pupil's example seems to have encouraged Rembrandt to paint landscapes of his own, which he began doing in the late 1630s. The museum bought the panel in 1985, and in 2017 it went back to Amsterdam for an exhibition at the Rembrandt House.