A wooded landscape at evening with a traveller and a huntsman with two dogs on a path, and peasants on a sandy hill, a church and a lake beyond

Born in Haarlem, but working in Amsterdam from 1660, Jan Wynants was one of the foremost of the Dutch artists of the second half of the 17th Century who moved away from the restricted palette of the 1620s and 1630s. His paintings are predominately landscapes and dunescapes, following the tradition established by Pieter de Molijn, Philips Wouwerman, Jacob van Ruisdael and others. The use of groupings of trees, and paths receding into the middle ground, is typical of his creation of a sense of space, highlighted by strategic areas of sunlight; his later works are characterized by the frequent inclusion of a blasted or fallen elm or oak tree. Wynants' work appealed strongly to the 18th century English taste for Dutch landscapes, and his work influence artists such as François Boucher, Thomas Gainsborough and John Crome. The staffage in his pictures was frequently painted by other hands, in particular Adriaen van de Velde, who may have been his pupil, or, as in this case, Johannes Lingelbach (1622-1674), a German, based in Amsterdam from 1653, who was one of the developers of the 'Italianate' genre in Holland.