A rocky cove with fisherfolk on the shore, an artist sketching in the foreground

Jacques d'Arthois was the foremost painter of the Brussels landscape school in the second half of the 17th century. He was apprenticed to Jan Mertens in 1625, and in 1634 he became a master of the Brussels painters’ guild, producing mostly landscapes with bushes, ponds, clay banks, and sandy hills using the same cool browns, blues and greens that are evident in the present work.