Accession Number
2009/1.499

Title
Untitled (Landscape with Peasants in a Cart)

Artist(s)
Allart van Everdingen

Artist Nationality
Dutch (culture or style)

Object Creation Date
1650-1675

Medium & Support
brown ink and wash on cream laid paper

Dimensions
2 in x 3 5/16 in (5.08 cm x 8.41 cm)

Credit Line
Joseph F. McCrindle Collection

Label copy
Gallery Rotation Winter 2013
Allaert van Everdingen
Netherlands, 1621–1675
Landscape with Peasants
in a Cart
1650–75
Brown ink and wash
Gift of the Joseph F. McCrindle Collection, 2009/1.499
These two small drawings attest to the rising importance in the seventeenth century of representations of everyday life. Such genre scenes were particularly popular with the prosperous art-buying citizens of the Dutch Republic, whose economy flourished as a result of unprecedented trade and commerce. In the foreground of Landscape with Peasants in a Cart the artist portrays a group of peasants making their way towards a town on the horizon. The diagonal lines of the composition direct the viewer towards the townscape in the distance where a tall, wooden steeple majestically rises above the buildings, penetrating the vast skyline. In Van de Velde’s Study of Barges, the simple composition emphasizes seven barges laden with goods, an important aspect of the new Dutch economy.

Subject matter
This bucolic rural village scene is evidence of the growing interest in landscape subjects in Dutch seventeenth century art. This small, but detailed drawing depicts a horse-drawn cart full of people approaching a rural village. A man and dog appear in the foreground next to the cart. The village in the middle ground consists of a number of small houses among some trees nestled against a small church, whose steeple rises into the sky. Three figures are visible standing in the road at the edge of the village. Birds, depicted as dark silhouettes, wheel in the sky.

Physical Description
This work is horizontally oriented. The lower left quadrant shows a horse-pulled cart with peasants resting in it. In front of the cart, a man and a dog walk in a field. The sky occupies the upper half of the work, and the horizon line is dominated by a church steeple as well as buildings and trees. Birds circle in the sky.

Primary Object Classification
Drawing

Primary Object Type
landscape

Collection Area
Western

Rights
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Keywords
Canis familiaris (species)
boats
carts
landscapes (representations)
steeples (building components)
towns
wagons (cargo vehicles)