A mountainous river landscape, with anglers in the foreground, and a town atop a mountain in the distance

Herman Saftleven was a prolific painter, draftsman and engraver. Born in Rotterdam, he lived and worked in Utrecht, producing hundreds of paintings and thousands of topographical drawings throughout his career. From the 1650s onwards, he traveled extensively in the Rhine valley, recording his journeys in numerous sketches, which he worked up into paintings, prints, and finished drawings later in his life.

The region’s hilly landscape cut by river valleys made a lasting impression on Saftleven, who returned to it in many of his exquisitely rendered drawings. These poetic and refined depictions of the Rhineland established the artist as one of the most original landscapists of the Dutch Golden Age and earned him the praise of contemporaries like the poet Joost van den Vondel, who penned several panegyrics on Saftleven’s work and described him as the ‘geachten Rijnstroomschilder’ (‘esteemed Rhine river painter’).

This mountainous river landscape with an hamlet on top of the mountain at right and tiny active figures populating the composition is probably an idealized view of a valley in the Rhineland. The artist’s most attractive and appealing landscapes are, like the present one, finished drawings that incorporate delicately applied watercolor.