Castle on a River (1644): Art, History and Details

Castle on a River (1644) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Salomon van Ruysdael (Dutch, 1602–1670).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Salomon van Ruysdael, the uncle of Jacob van Ruisdael, here represents a free interpretation of the Castle Loevenstein. In addition to its picturesque qualities, the castle had great political and cultural importance as the official state prison and a key fort in the southern Netherlands. Painted just before the Dutch won independence from Spain in 1648, the painting likely expressed nationalist pride for its owner.

Object facts

• Title: Castle on a River
• Date: 1644
• Creator attribution: Salomon van Ruysdael (Dutch, 1602–1670)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 57 x 79 x 5.5 cm (22 7/16 x 31 1/8 x 2 3/16 in.); Unframed: 39.3 x 60.5 cm (15 1/2 x 23 13/16 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Dutch
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1973.2

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Stechow, Wolfgang. “A River Landscape by Salomon van Ruysdael.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 60, no. 7 (September 1973): 222–230.
• “The Year in Review for 1973.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 2 (February 1974): 31–78.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.