H. Smith Wright

British

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We look across low, rolling hills at a skyline with a tower, windmills, church steeples, and the rooflines of a distant town, beneath a pale blue sky filled with billowing white and ash-gray clouds in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition. The grass and scrubby vegetation closest to us is warmed with sunlight coming from the left side, and is painted in tones of mustard yellow, chocolate brown, and hints of sage green. The light falls across a road curving in from the lower right, where a group travels toward us. Two men wearing soft hats and rust-red tunics walk before a black carriage pulled by four gray horses. The coachman is wrapped in a cloak the same red as the men in front, and one occupant is visible inside. A man on horseback, dressed in a dark cloak and hat, rides alongside, with a skinny, pale brown dog trotting in front of him. A narrow, gleaming sliver of water with a flat-bottomed boat is to the left, just beyond the road. We see the boat from the long side, with three men near one end and bundles in the other. Another sailboat floats in the river, which winds into the distance to our left. Two more masted ships are docked in the distance, their sails furled. The clouds cast the back half of the landscape in shadow, so it is painted in cool tones of laurel green to capture the densely packed buildings of the town. Windmills and spires suggest more towns along the rise and in the deep distance. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “VGoyen 1646.”
Jan van Goyen, View of Rhenen, 1646, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2014.136.33

View of Rhenen

Jan van Goyen · 1646 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2014.136.33