Landscape in the Environs of The Hague

The road is a real one, the road from The Hague out to the village of Stompwijk. A mother and child walk along it between the puddles after rain. Ducks sit at the water's edge in front, sheep graze in a meadow beyond a ditch on the left, and a house shows through the trees in the distance. One small detail explains itself once you know it. The swing bridge over the canal has been left open, so that the cattle cannot wander across. Roelofs worked in two stages. In summer he came to the countryside around The Hague and made oil sketches outdoors, and in winter he turned them into finished paintings in his studio in Brussels. This one was probably finished in the early 1870s, and the national collection bought it in 1875.