The proprietor of the Flight to Neverland specialist art bookshop in Den Haag, Wilfried van den Elshout, has called Wout Muller ‘the best modern erotic painter in the Netherlands, who knows exactly how to create an erotic landscape that looks more than just a dream, and has the softness needed to be an outstanding painting and not an ensemble of erotic objects.’

Muller grew up in Hilversum, and studied at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. From 1971 to 1990 he taught at the Minerva Academy of Fine Arts in Groningen. During this period he took an important place among the Groningen figurative artists, and together with Matthijs Röling, Ger Siks, Trudy Kramer, Fritzi Harmsen van Beek, and his wife Clary Mastenbroek, became an important figure in what came to be known as the northern realism group of Dutch artists.

In 1994 he and Clary moved to a former wool spinning mill in Waterford in Ireland, Fairbrook House on the River Dawn. In 1998 and 1999 he took part in the Independent Realists exhibitions in Museum Møhlmann in Venhuizen. He also exhibited in Museum de Buitenplaats in Eelde, the Markiezenhof in Bergen op Zoom, and in leading galleries such as Galerie Utrecht, Galerie Mokum in Amsterdam, and Galerie Wiek XX in Groningen.

In January 2000 Wout Muller died suddenly from a heart attack in the garden of his Irish house. After his death the gallery already present in Fairbrook House was expanded by Clary Mastenbroek into a museum for modern figurative art, with several gardens. In 2002 Galerie Utrecht organised a retrospective of his work in the Jan van der Togt Museum in Amstelveen, and in 2008 the Drents Museum in Assen displayed an overview of his work.

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for suggesting the inclusion of this artist, and for supplying most of the images.