A horse-drawn cart with two women travelling down a flooded road at the edge of a wood

Siberechts became a master in Antwerp in 1648 and his earliest dated works are stylistically akin to the paintings of the Dutch Italianate landscape painters. Around 1660 he developed an individual style that took its inspiration from rustic life in Flanders. These landscapes are regularly dominated by female figures dressed in simple clothing. Their bright whites, reds and yellows form colourful accents against the cool greens of the landscapes. Figures with cattle fording a stream bordered by large trees is a recurring theme during this period. In 1673 the artist arrived in England from Flanders which started off his career as a topographical painter. He would stay there until his death in around 1703 and decorated many country houses with topographically recognizable views in more sobre color schemes. He occasionally kept on producing landscapes in the tradition of those of his later Flemish period, like the present composition. As was already pointed out by Fokker, Siberechts borrowed the distant landscape in the right background from an earlier picture now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest that is signed and dated 1667 (see T.-H. Fokker, op.cit.).