Salomon van Ruysdael, A Landscape with a Carriage and Horsemen at a Pool

Slender beech trees seem to lean forward to meet the clouds sweeping towards them. The sun has vanished over a distant hill, leaving a cool, limpid light and the figures and animals close to us almost in silhouette. Yet the light is still strong enough to make reflections in the pool. It filters through the branches of the trees, making a tracery of leaves, some of them turning copper. The silvery glint on the trunks facing away from the last rays of the sun suggest that, away to the left, the moon is about to rise, turning the tree behind them a misty grey.

Although peaceful and still, the painting seems to hold many sounds: the rustle of leaves in a sudden breeze, the jingle of a harness and the swish of hooves in the water, quiet voices and dogs sniffing at the ground. We catch a glimpse of the patience needed to make such a journey. The women sit serenely side saddle while the carriage driver slumps over the reins. One man stares down at his horse as it drinks – his hand is on his hip, as if he’s perhaps a little less patient than others.

To add to the realism of the picture, Salomon van Ruysdael has placed a dog, chin on its paws, patiently waiting as its master adjusts the harness on the white horse. A bunch of dead rabbits hang from the saddle, suggesting that there’s more than one party of people at the pool (one travelling and another hunting) or that the carriage is there simply to carry home anyone too tired to ride after a hunt. The clothes suggest prosperous middle-class people – they're not the flamboyant costumes of aristocratic riders shown by Philips Wouwerman in pictures such as The Interior of a Stable.

Van Ruysdael seems to have painted an atmosphere as well as a view. He used restrained, muted colours, establishing a mood that, for a seventeenth-century Dutch collector, might evoke memories of twilight on journeys taken into the countryside. Unlike the artist’s earlier paintings, such as A River Landscape with Fishermen drawing a Net, there is no underdrawing; he went straight in with the brush, painting fluently and with the assurance of long experience. He used an oak panel – paint flows more fluidly on this than on canvas, allowing him to depict light and small objects in great detail: the subtle change from pale gold to blue in the sky; the sudden glitter of the tack heads around the wheels and the curved hood of the carriage.