Fortifications and a windmill along a river

Fortifications and a windmill along a river belongs to a group of small-scale late works, dating from the early 1650s, painted by van Goyen on paper. This medium seems to have suited well the artist's last tonal phase of landscape painting in which he employed a distinctly brown monochrome in his palette. These works, roughly uniform in size, have the spontaneity and atmosphere found in his best drawings and depict tranquil and incidental scenes along the waterways of the Netherlands. In fact there are close parallels in the techniques he uses in his drawings of this date in which he often brushed over the chalk outlines with brown wash.

In the present work, groups of fishermen in rowing boats tend to their nets near a complex of fortified buildings including a windmill. The delightful details of the figures and the beautifully balanced composition built up through varying degrees of tonal depth reveal van Goyen's specifically Dutch style of landscape painting that emphasized tonality and realism.