Philips Koninck (1619-1688) was apprenticed to his older brother Jacob I in Rotterdam, probably in the late 1630s. He then returned to Amsterdam where he lived until his death. He was greatly influenced by Rembrandt and may have been one of his pupils. As the owner of a boat service and an inn, he was financially independent and could thus afford to concentrate on his favourite subject matter: landscape painting. Koninck stopped painting after 1676.

This painting is a good example of Philips Koninck's idealized Dutch landscapes: it shows a flat landscape seen from a high point of view under an enormous sky with a road winding towards the horizon and patterns of light and dark throughout. As a result, his landscapes divide into two equal parts: the sky above and the earth below, human figures being usually of secondary importance. Here resting travellers in the immediate foreground are used as a sort of repoussoir feature in order to lead the spectator's eye towards the wide horizon. The same process is used in another contemporary landscape, dated 1648: Flat landscape with a View of Distant Hills, Manchester Art Gallery, which also displays the same colour scheme. His use of earthy colours in these two paintings and the visible loose brushstrokes betray the influence of Rembrandt of whom he may have been a pupil. However this very restricted earthy palette does not appear very often in his production as he usually adds intense blue pigments that provide the picture with a cool however more joyful colouring. Like most of Dutch 17th century landscape, this view is a reconstruction based on outdoor sketches and memory. Koninck was indeed a prolific draughtsman and executed about 300 drawings, most in pen and ink, often with a coloured wash, which style is also close to Rembrandt. Because of the doubtful signature, scholars often debated the attribution of the painting. Nonetheless, Horst Gerson, in his extensive monograph (1936), left no doubt that this is a genuine work by Philips Koninck.