The present picture is an accomplished example of a group of river views that van Goyen painted in the early 1650s. In these landscape views the monochrome palette still prevails. That may be considered remarkable since the painter in his other landscapes by that time already had turned to a richer and more differentiated colour scheme with subdued blue skies and an overall more locally treated palette. Noteworthy in particular, is the subtle difference in tonality between the river scene on the one hand, and the sky with the groups of clouds on the other hand. While the landscape itself is marked by a restricted gamut of colours, the sky displays an astonishing richness of hues of blue and white. Yet, the whole is consistent and the colours are beautifully balanced.

Arthur Kay was a distinguished Glaswegian collector of Dutch Old Masters pictures. His collection, amassed mainly in the late-nineteenth century, included Pieter Saenredam’s Buurkerk at Utrecht, which Kay presented in 1902 to the National Gallery, London. However, Kay was in particular an avid collector of works by Jan van Goyen. However, it is not surprising that Kay owned no fewer than seventeen works by van Goyen. Jan van Goyen was extremely popular in nineteenth-century England. He proved an important source of inspiration to romantic landscape painters such as Turner and Constable.