As one so often finds in the work of Jan van Goyen, this drawing depicts 🍬a seemingly anony🅷mous yet very specific location that recurs, with only small variations, in a number of other works by the artist. 

The cottages seen here first make their appearance in an early pen and ink drawing, a sheet from a disbanded sketchbook that Van Goyen used in around 1629-31, which was formerly in the collections of William Esdaile and Kaye Dowland.¹ Next, Van Goyen made a drawing, dated 1649, now in the British Museum, which differs from the present drawing in details of the staffage, and in the fact that the distant church spire is obscured by the figures to the left.² Lastly, another version, possibly autograph, also bearing the date of 1652, and ൲closer in staffage to the present work, was sold, London, 11 March 1964, lot 185. 

The fact ღthat all Van Goyen's later representations of this appealing location include a second tree towards the right, but that this tree is absent from the first, early drawing, suggests not only that these drawings were based on real life observation, but also that the artist visited the location on multiple occasion💝s, separated by long enough to have allowed that second tree to grow.  

1. H.-U. Beck, Jan van Goyen 1596-1656, Amstꦛerdam 1972, p. 10, no. 17; reproduced vol. III (Doornspijk 1987), p. 29

2.  Beck, op. cit., 1972, p.64, no 18💃4; listing also two copies, in New York and Berlin