Jan Wijnants, 'A Landscape with Two Dead Trees', probably 1665-75

This is a landscape full of sunshine, energy and life. The strong sweeping curve of the track dominates the middle of the picture. Two greyhounds bound along, racing each other, while another dog lags behind, defecating on the verge. A horseman and his companion chat easily as they go, and in the distance we glimpse what seems to be a pedlar with his pack ambling along behind them.

The woodland to the right is in full summer leaf and the tree canopies seem to billow upwards, like the cumulus clouds which bloom in the luminous sky. Beyond all this, a pleasing view opens out – a cluster of houses, the outline of a church and the neat lines of an orchard in front of it and, in the far distance, a line of blue-grey hills swells along the horizon.

All seems right with the world – or, it would do if it weren’t for one thing. Right up front, filling more than a third of the canvas, are the dramatic outlines of two blasted trees. The nearer one is thrust towards us, its limbs fallen, a few dead branches like sharp fracture lines across the sky. It is so close we can see that moss and lichen are spreading over the remaining bark. Most of the rest has peeled away, exposing the livid pinks and fading greys of the dead wood beneath. Some of the branches have fallen to the ground below and lie next to a thistle which has gone to seed, its drooping leaves beginning to turn.

Wijnants frequently used this motif of a dead or dying tree in the foreground of his landscapes (see A Landscape with a Dead Tree, and a Peasant driving Oxen and Sheep along a Road, for example). It works as a visual device, acting as a frame for the composition and helping to create a greater sense of depth to the landscape. But as this work features not one but two dead trees, positioned so prominently, it is hard not to detect a note of melancholy – a sense that Wijnants wanted to inject a reminder of mortality into this otherwise idyllic country view.

The view is not only idyllic, but also probably idealised. Most Dutch landscape paintings of the seventeenth century were not attempts at an accurate depiction of a particular place, but aimed to create a pleasing prospect reminiscent of a familiar stretch of countryside. Here, it is the hinterland around the town of Haarlem, where Wijnants lived and worked; it formed the backdrop for most of his paintings. The hills we can see in the distance are not the foothills of a distant mountain range, but ancient sand dunes which have, over many centuries, been overgrown with scrub and woodland (it is quite possible that he exaggerated their height for greater dramatic effect).