The Little Bridge
painting by Gillis Rombouts
The Little Bridge is an undated landscape painting by the Dutch painter Gillis Rombouts. It is now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Strasbourg, France. Its inventory number is 423.
Writing in 1894, the specialist Cornelis Hofstede de Groot described this painting as one of Rombout's masterpieces. At that time, it belonged to the collection of Martin Schubart in Dresden. In the year of Schubart's death, 1899, the collection was sold at an auction in Munich, where Georg Dehio bought the painting on behalf of the Strasbourg museum, for 2,900 Mark.
The Little Bridge is signed but not dated. It depicts a little wooden bridge over a canal, in which some ducks are swimming. The largest house on the right has been identified as an inn.
“The Little Bridge” enters the record as painting by Gillis Rombouts. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Little, Bridge and painting can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Little Bridge” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Little, Bridge and painting provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q99390821. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1894 and 1899.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Little Bridge”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Little Bridge primary sources, The Little Bridge archive and Little research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Little Bridge”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Little Bridge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.