The present picture is similar to other works by Ruisdael of about 1650, during which time - like Cornelis Vroom under whose influence he was working - he was developing his own approach based on a personal observation of nature. Thus the group of trees on the left with their filigree foliage, crisply silhouetted against the light sky, and the composition running parallel to the picture plane recall Vroom's landscapes of the 1620s and 1630s. These features also appear in Ruisdael's Evening River Scene with an Angler, dated 1649 (see S. Slive, in the catalogue of the exhibition, Jacob Ruisdael, the Hague, Mauritshuis and Harvard, The Fogg Art Museum, 1 Oct. 1981-11 April 1982, p. 17, fig. 3).

The unusual freshness and direct approach bear comparison with the artist's landscape drawings of the same period; see, for instance, the Trees at the edge of a River in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (S. Slive, op. cit., pp. 178-9, fig. 68).