The Prodigal Son

An enchanting farmyard landscape, this 17th century genre painting with Biblical narrative is the greatest work by the artist in the UK. It is based on the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15, 11-32). The son is shown feeding among the swine at the right, and the parable serves as a pretext to explore a theme of Netherlandish rural daily life. This work betrays a very refined sensibility of the artist, evident here in the delicate gradations of colour and light and in the meticulous description of the details, such as the roof tiles of the central cottage; different in type and arrangement, these tiles have evidently been laid on separate occasions and have weathered differently.