WYNANTS, Jan

Wynants made mainly landscapes of the sand dunes around Haarlem.

This painting represents a dune landscape with hunters in the foreground, a lake and mountains beyond.

The rather limited art of Wynants consisted of landscapes with dunes in the background and a sandy road in the foreground winding past trees in the middle distance. There is usually a dead tree in the foreground as well as a figure group. These figures are not by Wynants himself, but usually by Wouwerman (whose own works are very similar), Johann Lingelbach or Wynants own pupil, Adriaen van de Velde.

The picture shown is a good example of these landscapes. The figures were painted by Johann Lingelbach who frequently worked together with Wynants.

The picture shows a river landscape with elegant travelers and a beggar in a dune landscape. Throughout his career, Wynants drew inspiration for his landscapes from the dunes near his native Haarlem. The artist often employed a similar compositional structure in his landscapes, with a path winding through the undulating dunes and receding into the distance.

Here, as in many of his paintings, the left side of the picture is built up with dunes and trees while the right side opens up to a panoramic view, creating a sense of space.

The staffage in Wynants’s paintings was often added by other artists. In the present case Johannes Lingelbach was the collaborator.

This large-scale landscape depicts a wooded evening landscape with a hunter and his dogs, another hunter on horseback conversing with a peasant, a fishermen and a falconer carrying a hoop of falcons on a path, a wagon and other figures by a lake beyond.

Throughout his career, Wynants drew inspiration for his landscapes from the dunes near Haarlem, where he was born, and where his early development was influenced by Jacob van Ruisdael and Philips Wouwermans. This painting employs one of the artist’s favourite compositional structures, with the left side of the canvas built up with dunes and trees, and a winding path leading into an open panoramic view at right.

The staffage in Wynants’s paintings was often added by another artist, in this case by his frequent collaborator Adriaen van de Velde.

This large-scale landscape depicts a wooded evening landscape with a hunter and his dogs, another hunter on horseback conversing with a peasant, a fishermen and a falconer carrying a hoop of falcons on a path, a wagon and other figures by a lake beyond.

The painting depicts a wooded landscape with travellers and a dog on a path near a stream, a farm in the background.

The painting shows a wooded landscape with a boy and animals near a cottage. Jan Wynants was a prominent landscape painter in Haarlem. The figures in the present painting were probably painted by Adriaen van de Velde or Paulus Potter.

Like many Haarlem landscape painters, Wynants was inspired by the dunes near to his native city. His large dune paintings are often conceived in deliberately contrasting masses, arranged on either side of a road leading into the picture. The bold placement of the large gnarled tree and the fallen tree trunk in the foreground in the present painting are a reminder of the solemn atmosphere of Jacob van Ruisdael’s work. Wynants’s treatment of the sandy road and dunes and his penchant for large gnarled trees stem from landscapes executed in the late 1640s and early 1650s by Ruisdael and Philips Wouwerman.