Wooded Landscape

In 1943, with the Netherlands under German occupation, the Amsterdam dealers Douwes sold this panel to the museum in Düsseldorf. It had already travelled. In 1889 it belonged to the Dresden collector Fedor Zschille, and in the 1930s to a collector at Loosdrecht, near Utrecht. After the war the Dutch recovery commission brought it back, and it has been in the Rijksmuseum since 1948, first on loan and then for good. What all those owners bought was a strange wood. Giant trees twist up from a rise, their trunks furred with moss and ivy, the leaves picked out in small whitish dots over browns and greens. A few tiny figures stand talking on the road beneath them. Van Geel signed it at the bottom centre, Jacob v geel, around 1633.