Lucas van Uden (Antwerp 1595 - Antwerp 1672) - Landscape with a Cart Crossing a River -

In Landscape with a Cart Crossing a River, Lucas van Uden depicts a horse-drawn cart, laden with huge stones, as it struggles across the uneven ground, a man straining as he tries to help the horses cross the river. The painting is dominated by the craggy cliff, overgrown with gnarled trees it splits the painting in two, with a dark river to the left hand side, and the brightly lit countryside on the right.

Van Uden’s painting is a close repetition of a composition by Peter Paul Rubens’ Landscape with Stone Carriers, that hangs in the Hermitage, having been acquired in 1779 as part of the Walpole collection. The major difference between the two paintings is that van Uden has eliminated the rider of the near horse. Although it has long been thought that van Uden was a member of Rubens' workshop and provided landscape backgrounds for some of the master's compositions, there is no documentary evidence to support the assumption. Nonetheless, he clearly knew Rubens' work very well, for he copied several other compositions, including the Landscape with Ulysses and Nausicaa, in the Pitti Palace, Florence, as well as borrowing specific motifs from the older artist.

There are several reasons why van Uden could have chosen this particular work as inspiration, not least because it offers the chance to portray night and day in the same piece. There is a distinct split in moods in van Uden’s work, with the left hand side dark and forbidding, the river threatening the progress of the cart and two birds circling ominously overhead. Contrasted to this is the right hand side of the work where the pastoral landscape is bathed in a soft, warm light. Van Uden’s watercolours and etchings, for which he is most admired, display this same refined sense of light and mood.

In terms of composition Landscape with a Cart Crossing a River is a fairly unusual work for van Uden, a painting such as the Hermitage’s Landscape with Carts being more typical. Most of van Uden’s works are constructed according to the same compositional plan evident in Landscape with Carts. The foreground usually has a small bank topped by a few slim birches, or other tall trees with transparent foliage. The trees are typically arranged in small groups and are all very straight except for one, which inclines crookedly, usually towards the centre of the panel. In the centre there are often peaceful fields and meadows, with hamlets, small ponds with reflections of trees and clouds, shrubs and bushes or rows of trees with thick, round foliage. In the background are mountains, which, unlike those in the paintings of many of his predecessors, are not in the least ominous.

Van Uden was the son of the town painter of Antwerp. Around 1627 he joined Antwerp's Guild of Saint Luke as a ‘master's son’. He travelled along the Rhine from 1644 to 1646 but spent most of his career in Antwerp.

Van Uden's great talent was for observing nature. According to his biographer, Van Uden took walks in the country in the early mornings, solely to sketch. Though landscape artists commonly employed others to paint figures in their settings, Van Uden usually painted them himself.