揚(yáng)·希勃瑞茲認(rèn)領(lǐng)

Siberechts painted the present painting in 1692, by which stage he had been living and working in England for many years. This painting is however dramatically different from his usual work of this period. Instead it follows in the tradition of the landscapes from his later Flemish period, which he occasionally still produced. By comparing A Horse-Drawn Cart with Two Women Travelling down a Flooded Road at the Edge of a Wood to a painting from his Flemish period, such as Peasants Crossing a Stream, which was executed over twenty years earlier, it becomes apparent that Siberechts has adopted the manner and style of the earlier work in the present painting. Both paintings have a stretch of water in the foreground on which Siberechts has indulged a clear interest in the glittering effects of light off the water’s surface. In both works the dominant figures are female, and the inclusion of cattle wading through the water are a prominent feature. The employment of the expanding distant landscape which leads our eye deep into the background of the work, is again a technique apparent in both paintings.

A Wooded Landscape with Peasants in a Horse-Drawn Cart Travelling Down a Flooded Road, though the date is now unreadable, is an exceptional example characteristic of Siberechts’ production during his Antwerp period. These paintings of noble peasants, completed between 1661 and 1672, drew strongly on the rustic way of life that he had observed in Flanders and are generally considered to represent his best works. The recurrence of scenes showing fords or flooded roads through which peasants wade with their cattle, hay wagons and carts laden with vegetables demonstrate Siberechts’ predilection for portraying such motifs. These compositions not only display his great skill as a genre painter, but also enabled him to masterfully depict the iridescence of light on moving water. In the present work, the water is gently splashed about by the hooves of the horse and cart as it picks its way through the flood, the light catching the disturbed waters.