Surviving seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes attributed to major artists now equal in number those attributed to minor ones
But since in the seventeenth century many prolific minor artists made a living supplying the voracious market for Dutch landscapes, while only a handful of major artists painted in the genre, many attributions of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape paintings to major artists are undoubtedly erroneous
In the eighteenth century, landscapes by minor seventeenth-century artists were often simply thrown away or else destroyed through improper storage.