Peasants Crossing a Stream (c. 1670): Art, History and Details

Peasants Crossing a Stream (c. 1670) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jan Siberechts (Flemish, 1627-c. 1703).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The painting is characteristic of Jan Siberechts's Antwerp style, characterized by scenes with fords through which peasants wade with their cattle. The peasants wear simple but brightly colored attire and stand out against the cool green landscape. Flanked by overgrown foliage, the silver hues of the still stream shimmer with reflections. Over the course of his career, which included moving to London in 1672, Siberechts continued to use many of the same figures in his paintings, including Flemish peasant women carrying jugs, like the one seen in this painting. Likewise, his approaches to depicting animals, such as the cows seen here, changed very little over time and are ubiquitous throughout his oeuvre.

Object facts

• Title: Peasants Crossing a Stream
• Date: c. 1670
• Creator attribution: Jan Siberechts (Flemish, 1627-c. 1703)
• Culture: Flanders
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 119 x 143 x 9 cm (46 7/8 x 56 5/16 x 3 9/16 in.); Unframed: 99.7 x 122.5 cm (39 1/4 x 48 1/4 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Flemish
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1969.18

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1969." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 57, no. 1 (1970): 2-50.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.