Forest Road at Evening

Lucas van Uden often set out into the countryside early in the morning to make landscape sketches. This particular drawing of an imaginary, idyllic panorama was made as a highly finished, independent work of art and was probably an elaboration of one of his early morning sketches.

The composition displays van Uden's most familiar motifs, many of which derive from Peter Paul Rubens's work: cattle and the woman balancing a milk container on her head, the shimmering birch trees at left, and a path leading to a deep vista that opens onto a flat landscape punctuated by a church spire. Sunlight filters through the scintillating leaves of trees on the left, an effect that van Uden so favored that he often made it the focal point of his drawings.