A town with figures working in bleaching fields in the foreground

Pieter Gysels is believed to have been a pupil of Jan Brueghel the Younger. Although this is not certain, his artistic style and his landscapes in particular reveal a clear debt to the Brueghel tradition. Gysels became a member of the guild in 1649/50 and established himself as a painter of small scale landscapes, often inhabited by peasants, of which the present picture is a fine example. The bleaching fields depicted in the foreground are quite common in 17th century paintings, a well known example being the in the Mauritshuis, The Hague.