Italianate Landscape with Cattle

Karel Dujardin signed this small panel at the bottom, K. DU. JARDIN fec, and the Mauritshuis dates it to the 1660s. Its route to The Hague runs through several famous collections. Until 1771 it belonged to Jan and Pieter Bisschop, collectors in Rotterdam, and then to Jan Hope, an Amsterdam banker whose family later took its pictures to London. By the early 20th century it was with the Widener family in Philadelphia.

In 1942, during the German occupation, it was sold at auction in Dordrecht to Vitale Bloch, an art historian and dealer in The Hague. It then passed to Hans Posse, the Dresden museum director who was buying for the Führermuseum that Hitler planned in Linz. After the war it was recovered and became part of the NK collection, the works the Dutch state took into its care because they had been stolen, confiscated or sold under Nazi rule, and for which restitution claims can still be considered. Since 2010 it has belonged to the Mauritshuis, which shows it in the Gallery Prince Willem V in The Hague.