Landscape with Bridge, known as 'The Small Bridge'

This little panel once carried a signature at lower right, S. Ruysdael, the name of Salomon van Ruysdael, a Haarlem landscape painter. The signature is no longer there, and the Mauritshuis now catalogues the picture as the work of an unknown painter in the circle of Jan van Goyen.

The confusion is understandable. In the late 1620s Salomon van Ruysdael and Van Goyen were both painting small country views in muted browns and greens, and for a short time their pictures came very close. This one, known as The Small Bridge, is dated to about 1627 or 1628.

The Mauritshuis bought it in 1892 from the J.E. Goedhart gallery, a dealer in Amsterdam. It belongs to the museum and hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V in The Hague.