Summer

In the 1620s Dutch buyers liked their seasons in pairs, a small summer landscape and a winter one to hang side by side. Jan van Goyen painted about 22 such pairs early in his career, and this round panel, dated 1625, is the summer half of one. Its winter partner from the same year is also in the Rijksmuseum. Everything here speaks of fine weather. A big tree in full leaf rises beside a farmhouse with a well, a rider has stopped to talk with people on the road, and behind them a ferry carries a wagon across the river toward a windmill and a church tower. The tall tree and the chatting figures come from his teacher Esaias van de Velde, an early painter of the plain Dutch countryside. The panel reached Amsterdam in 1958, after collections in St Petersburg, Paris and London.