Jan Wijnants

Jan Wijnants went on painting the dunes behind Haarlem long after he had left them. His landscapes follow a pale sandy track past a low bank, a fence or a farmhouse, often with a dead tree, its trunk bleached white, in the foreground, all under a wide summer sky. They were easy pictures to live with, and collectors kept buying them well into the 18th century.

He was born in Haarlem in 1631 or 1632, the son of a Catholic art dealer, and around 1660 he moved to Amsterdam. There he painted steadily, kept an inn on the side, and was still always in debt. He seldom painted his own figures. The walkers, riders and cattle in many of his pictures are by Adriaen van de Velde, whom the early biographer Arnold Houbraken called Wijnants's pupil, and later by other specialists such as Johannes Lingelbach. Wijnants was buried in Amsterdam on 23 January 1684.