Landscape with horses at a well

The Louvre dates this small panel to 1638 at the latest, and the reason is a print. The engraver Schelte à Bolswert copied the composition, reversed as prints usually are, and of all his engravings after Rubens's landscapes it is the only one he dated. The painting served as its model. Whether it was made with that in mind, or chosen later, perhaps for a series of prints, the museum leaves open. Its own past is patchy. It probably reached Paris in 1794, taken from Belgium by the French armies, and the picture itself was long doubted. After Napoleon's fall it was entered in the inventory twice, once as a Rubens and once as an unknown Flemish sketch in his manner. The sun is going down behind the trees, and at the lower right riders have stopped to water their horses.