Lucas van Uden Antwerp 1595 - 1672

Lucas van Uden was the son and probable pupil of the Antwerp town painter Artus van Uden (1544-?). In 1626-7 he was enrolled in the Guild of Saint Luke in Antwerp as an independent master. Although it was generally believed that Van Uden was active as a landscape painter in the workshop of Sir Peter Paul Rubens, but despite his copying of some of Rubens motifs and compositions this assumption would appear to have little basis in fact. It is certain that Van Uden collaborated with David Teniers the Younger, who often provided the staffage for his pictures.

The attention to detail, which firmly places him in the tradition of Jan Brueghel the Elder, and his efforts to provide a faithful view of nature, a hallmark of Van Uden's smaller panels, are very evident in the present work. Indeed this picture can be compared to the Landscape with a Rainbow, in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (see Y. Thierry, Les Peintres de Paysage au XVIIe Siecle, Brussels, p. 170, reproduced).