Gillis Rombouts belonged to the second wave of the great Haarlem landscape tradition, working under the direct influence of Salomon van Ruysdael, uncle of the more famous Jacob van Ruisdael, whose own atmospheric, tonal approach to the Dutch countryside shaped a whole generation of Haarlem painters. Born in Haarlem in 1630, Rombouts specialised in woodland scenes, beach views and winter landscapes, occasionally extending into genre and historical subjects, and remained active in his native city until his death there, recorded in Haarlem in either 1672 or a few years later.
Rombouts passed his craft on to his son, the painter Salomon Rombouts, whom he probably trained directly, continuing the family's engagement with the Haarlem landscape school into a second generation. His surviving work is held today in major collections including the Rijksmuseum, the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where a Landscape with a Stag Hunt is attributed to him.
The wooded landscape by Rombouts held by John Mitchell Fine Paintings exemplifies the tranquil, closely observed treatment of trees and woodland characteristic of the wider Haarlem landscape tradition of the mid-seventeenth century, a school that also produced Jacob van Ruisdael and, within the gallery's own collection, his nephew Adriaen van de Velde.