Esaias van den Velde (1587-1630) is recognized for his role in the development of a more naturalistic and indigenous style in Dutch landscape painting. While his early paintings and etchings are more oblong, one of his earliest signed and dated landscapes (1614) in the collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art measures 25.7 x 31.9 cm. Stechow speculated in 1960 that the sky had been enlarged. In 1986, an in-depth technical study was begun using x-ray radiography, dendrochronology, infrared and ultraviolet photography, and pigment analysis to determine what changes were made to the painting, whether they were by the artist or not, and when they might have been made. The original panel, poplar wood, 12.7 x 31.9 cm, was probably 15-16 cm in height initially. Oak wood strips have been added to the top and bottom and all thinned and mounted onto masonite in the 1940s. While smalt was the blue pigment in the original panel, the top addition contains ultramarine. None of the dimensional changes are judged to be by the artist, but probably date from the 1800s.