Travellers at an inn by a river with peasants and a washerwoman nearby, at sunset, on a cloudy day

Jan van Goyen undertook a journey along the Rhine in 1650/51. The impressions from this trip were recorded in a sketchbook, the Lilienfeld sketchbook, so called after the New York dealer who sold drawings from it from 1957. The inn depicted in the present picture was probably a motif in one of these sketches, see for instance the drawings sold at Sotheby's Amsterdam, 17 November 1980, lot 84 (H.U. Beck, Jan van Goyen, III, 1987, pp.2124/5, n0s 847/41, ill.). The inn has not been identified but occurs also in the picture, signed and dated 165., with Leger Galleries, London, 1972 (H.U. Beck, Jan van Goyen, II, 1973, p.278, n0612, ill.) and in the picture, signed and dated 1653 which was with Hoogendijk, Amsterdam (see Beck, op. cit., p.462, n01030).