Jan BothDutch, 1618–1652A Peasant driving a laden mule
Can I see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “A Peasant driving a laden mule” now? Collection: Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Not on view at present. Checked September 25, 2026.
London, United Kingdom
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
Jan Both (ca. 1618-1652) may have trained in Utrecht under Abraham Bloemaert (ca. 1564-1651) and Gerrit van Honthorst (ca. 1590-1656). By 1638, he had joined his brother Andries in Rome but was back in Utrecht by 1646 and remained there until his death.
Read on
This painting is a typical example of Jan Both's compositional inventions built upon a series of diagonals. Here the path, the stream and the ascendant versant of the hill structure the whole picture and give a sense of depth even though a large stripe of land occupies the foreground. Jan Both also often represented landscapes with transiting laden mules and figures such as Italian landscape,Mauritshuis, The Hague, bathed in a warm Mediterranean sunlight, a tonality that is recurrent in his entire production. The reddish brown palette of the present picture, which probably looks darker than it would have originally been, is close to a ca. 1645 painting in the National Gallery, London: Men with an Ox and Cattle by a Pool,which also presents a similar subject. However the date of his works is far from easy to determine and he rarely dated them.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Details
- Accession number
- CAI.81
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum
- Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
In the life of Jan Both
The whole life1642–1652 · Workplace
Utrecht
1643–1646
Pupil: Hendrik Verschuring
1646
Pupil: Barend Bispinck
![A Pig; Breton Peasant Kneeling [verso], Paul Gauguin, 1884-1888](https://api.nga.gov/iiif/13146db4-7e29-45f6-befe-7d3904ec97c0/full/!2400,2400/0/default.jpg)
