Landscape with Peasants

In this work the viewer's eye is led directly from the first, darker plane that includes the figures, through the bridge in the middle, to the little village in the foggy distance. The eldest son of a prominent artistic family in Haarlem, Esaias van de Velde was one of the founders of the school of Dutch landscape painting in the 17th century, which gradually relinquished the idealization of natur…