Landscape with Cow drinking by Jan Wijnants

A mass of darkening clouds looms overhead. From within the central group of trees, a stark silvery trunk appears like a lightning rod connecting the sky to the earth, creating a line which draws the viewer’s eye to rest on the warm dark brown of a grazing cow’s back. Nearby, the massive bulk of a sand dune creates a dramatic focal point in the landscape, dwarfing the animals and figures which pepper this rural scene. Journeying along the pathway in the direction of the distant hills to the left, a tiny figure struggles onwards with a load on their back, while another scales the dune to the right.

As the artist’s signature in the lower right corner evidences, this painting is by the Dutch artist Jan Wijnants (1632-84). Born in Haarlem, his native landscape of sand dunes may well have inspired this painting and its companion Landscape in the Dulwich Picture Gallery collection. These works, which provide variations on a theme, were painted after Wijnants's move from Haarlem to Amsterdam in 1660, where he remained for the rest of his life. As well as being a painter, Wijnants was also a draughtsman, painter of interiors and innkeeper, as he struggled to make a living from his paintings during his lifetime. By the eighteenth-century, when this work was acquired by the founders of Dulwich Picture Gallery, Wijnants's work was highly desirable and influenced major artists of the time such as Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88).