A wooded landscape with figures on a path and a lake beyond

Regarded as one of the most ambitious landscapes of the Dutch seventeenth century, this monumental canvas bears witness to the extraordinary harmony of vision between Jan Wijnants and Adriaen van de Velde. At nearly two metres wide, it is exceptional in scale within Wijnants’s oeuvre, transforming the Haarlem terrain into a stage of lyrical grandeur, animated with narrative life and atmospheric depth unrivalled in other collaborations by the artists. Celebrated since the nineteenth century, where it had a central place in the great Rothschild collection in Vienna, the painting has long been recognised as a masterpiece of Dutch landscape painting, its legacy shaped as much by its artistic brilliance as by its enduring presence in the most discerning collections.

Born in Haarlem, Wijnants derived lifelong inspiration from the sandy inclines and wind-stripped trees of his native countryside, translating them into scenes of heightened drama. The present composition, characteristic of his maturity in the 1660s, opens at left with a sandy bank crowned by two striking trees, one stripped bare, the other partially in leaf, which frame the foreground and provide a symbolic counterpoint of mortality and renewal. From this repoussoir, the path recedes into depth, leading the eye toward a tranquil lake and luminous horizon. Wijnants’s handling of evening light, casting long shadows and infusing the scene with a mellow amber glow, accentuates the sense of transition between day and night, lending the work its lyrical balance of intimacy and grandeur (Eisele, op. cit.). The meticulous flora in the foreground, rendered with near-botanical precision, attest to close observation of the Haarlem terrain, even as the luminous horizon betrays the idealising tendencies of the Italianate landscape.

Yet it is van de Velde who imparts the narrative animation. Born into a family of distinguished marine painters, the son of Willem van de Velde the Elder and brother of Willem the Younger, Adriaen showed early promise as a landscape painter and, according to Arnold Houbraken, was sent to Haarlem to study with Wijnants. There he honed his skill in rendering figures and animals within natural settings, and in the decades that followed became the most sought-after contributor of staffage, enriching the landscapes of Wijnants as well as those of Jacob van Ruisdael, Meindert Hobbema and Jan van der Heyden. His contribution here is unmistakable: the mounted hunter conversing with a peasant, the falconer with a hoop of birds, the lively hounds at their heels – each rendered with the elegance and naturalism that made him the most sought-after collaborator of his generation. Far from incidental, these figures transform the wooded terrain into lived space, infusing it with rhythm and narrative resonance.

Comparable works confirm the centrality of this compositional type within Wijnants’s oeuvre. The wooded dune at left and the opening vista at right recur in works in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin (inv. no. 508; fig. 1), and in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. no. 38; one of a pair), though both are smaller in scale. Yet the present work surpasses them in breadth of vision and variety of incident, and may rightly be counted among Wijnants’s masterpieces.

Its distinguished provenance attests to this enduring recognition: acquired in 1845 for Baron Anselm von Rothschild, Vienna, through Moritz Daniel Oppenheim and W. A. Netscher as part of his celebrated purchase of the Leonardus Pieter Klerk de Reus collection, it was displayed in the Gemäldesaal of his Renngasse palace, where Dutch paintings occupied pride of place (Kunth, op. cit., 2006). Passed down through successive generations, it was confiscated by the Nazi authorities following the 'Anschluss' of Austria, March 1938, and selected for the 'Sonderauftrag Linz'. Recovered from the Depot Sankt Agatha bei Goisern in August 1946 and returned to Kremsmünster monastery that December, it was recovered in 1947 by Baroness Clarice von Rothschild before entering the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, in 1948, where it remained until its restitution to the family in March 1999.

As a collaborative tour de force between Wijnants and van de Velde, and as one of the defining works of the Viennese Rothschild collection, this landscape embodies both the artistic achievements of the seventeenth century and the resonance of their modern collecting histories. With its breadth of vision and coherence of artistic voices, it remains a masterwork of seventeenth-century landscape painting, rendering it not only a testament to the collaboration between Wijnants and van de Velde but also to the enduring appeal of Dutch landscape painting in the European imagination.

We are grateful to Michael Hall for his assistance in the cataloguing of the present frame, noting that it is the original provided by or for Baron Anselm von Rothschild following its acquisition from the collection of Leonardus Pieter Klerk de Reus.