Landscape on the Edge of the Dunes

This panel has a twin. In 1648 Jan Vermeer van Haarlem, then 20, painted a second dune landscape of exactly the same size, 52 by 68 centimetres, as its pendant, and in the early 1900s both turn up in private hands in London. There they parted. The Mauritshuis bought this one in 1907. The other, a farmstead by the dunes, went to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 1908, and since 1933 it has been on loan to the Mauritshuis, though it is not on display.

Here a great mass of trees stands against a dark, heavy sky, and the sandy track below leads off to a low horizon. On it a few small figures have stopped by the roadside. The painter signed the panel Jvmeer, with the J and the v joined into one letter, and added the year.