Jan Wijnants Haarlem (?) circa 1635 - 1684 Amsterdam

P. Locquet, Amsterdam;
His sale, Amsterdam, September 22, 1783, lot 435, for 355 florins, to Gildemeester;
J. Gildemeester (1744 - 1799), Amsterdam;
By whom sold, Amsterdam, June 11, 1800, lot 275, for 260 florins, to C.S. Roos;
J. Walter, Bearwood;
Thence by descent to A.F. Walter, London;
Anonymous sale, London, June 20, 1913, lot 141, for £250, to Buttery;
With J. Goudstikker, Amsterdam, by 1917;
Dr. Einer Perman, Stockholm, by 1946;
Private collection, U.S.A., from whom purchased by Noortman Master Paintings.

The Hague, Goudstikker, 1917, no. 59;
Rotterdam, Goudstikker, 1917, no. 60;
Amsterdam, Goudstikker, 1917, no. 81.

C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, London 1927, vol. VIII, pp. 511 - 512, cat. no. 352;
K. Eisele, Jan Wijnants, Stuttgart 2000, p. 188, cat. no. 292.

The year 1659, the date of this picture, marks an important turning point in Wijnant's oeuvre.  This is when he abandons his characteristic large-scale brick farm buildings in favor of the stark tree-trunk motif for the foreground of his compositions.  A painting by Wijnants in the National Gallery, London (NG883), of the same year, also features a similar gnarled stump.  Furthermore, the same foreground configuration, with the woman and boy, occurs in yet another picture of the same year, currently preserved in the Hamburg Kunsthalle.  It is clear that the evocations conveyed by the image of the barren tree trunk resonated strongly with the artist.  In this painting, the stump is anthropomorphized to the extent that it echoes the bent posture of the old woman walking past it, perhaps in order to stress their common bareness and austerity in contrast with the peaceful pastoral landscape that unfolds in the background.