A Wooded Landscape with Travellers by a Stream, a Town Beyond

Dwarfed by the trees and stumps, woodcutters emerge from a thick forest in the Bohemian countryside around Prague. Pieter Stevens's art was heavily influenced by his many years in Bohemia as court painter to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II of Prague. Well aware of Gillis van Coninxloo's imaginary, close-up forest scenes, Stevens creatively used a similar composition to depict a realistic setting. The steeply pitched roofs and towers of the picturesque city appeared often in Stevens' work; though not definitively identified, they resemble those of Prague.

Characteristically, Stevens enlivened this scene with reddish wash highlights in the trees and blue wash in the sky. His flexible pen strokes and broad areas of wash lend the view an atmospheric quality.