Landscape with a Church and Mules on a Path

As a young man, Jacob de Heusch spent seventeen years in Italy (ca. 1675–92) before returning to his native Utrecht. It was in Holland that he painted all his extant work. While in Rome he abandoned the style he had learned from his uncle, Willem de Heusch—an emulator of Jan Both—and instead turned for inspiration to paintings by French and Italian landscapists. While the geometric forms of the buildings in this early, intimate, idyllic scene owe something to Poussin, and the decorative quality of the trees to the work of Gaspar Dughet (both French painters active in Rome), the coloristic notes and meticulous detail admit De Heusch’s northern roots. Particularly beautiful is the play between the shadowed foreground plane—from which the brightly lit donkey and dog lapping well-water stand out—and the sunny, airy distance. <br>