A family walking in a wooded landscape, a view of a village beyond

Although Adriaen van Stalbemt rarely dated his works, Klaus Ertz provisionally proposed a date of circa 1630-40 for the present panel (op. cit., p. 176). Born in Antwerp, van Stalbemt moved with his family to Middelburg before returning to his native city in 1609, when he became a master in the city’s guild shortly thereafter. In 1632-33, he spent nearly a year in England, where he worked for, among others, King Charles I (see, for example, the View of Greenwich with King Charles I, Queen Henrietta Maria and the Court of circa 1632 in the Royal Collection).

Van Stalbemt specialised in rural and forest landscapes, often populated with humble dwellings viewed through clearings. In contrast with their modest surroundings, elegantly dressed figures here amble along a diagonally receding dirt path, watched by a dog, as in a similar painting dated 1614 in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (inv. no. 2870). The bright colouration and comparatively high degree of finish in this and other works by van Stalbemt underscore the artist’s indebtedness to the leading Antwerp landscape painter of the age, Jan Brueghel the Elder.