Wooded Landscape with Shepherds

Swanevelt painted this wooded landscape with shepherds in the 1630s, during his years in Rome, on canvas that was later laid down on a wooden panel. By 1712 it was at Het Loo, the Orange family's palace near Apeldoorn, and it later passed to Prince William V, the last stadholder. In 1795 French armies occupied the Republic, and the prince's paintings were confiscated and taken to Paris, where this one stayed in the Musée Napoléon, as the Louvre was then called, until 1815.

When the pictures came back, it joined the Royal Picture Gallery, which from 1816 was housed in the Prince William V Gallery on the Buitenhof, and in 1822 it moved with the rest of the collection to the Mauritshuis across the Hofvijver pond. The Mauritshuis owns it, and it hangs once more in the Gallery Prince Willem V.