Cottages with Haystack by a Muddy Track

Trained in landscape and genre painting, Jan van Goyen was an important representative of Haarlem "tonal" painting.

He drew inspiration for his masterly renderings of modest, unspectacular motifs from his walking tours through the northern and southern Netherlands. His standard repertoire included dunes under a lofty sky, gnarled oaks, and tiny human staffage figures on rough, sandy roads. This style of almost monochrome mood painting reached its height around 1640.