A river landscape with goats and cattle, a farmhouse beyond

Born in Woerden, near Utrecht, Herman van Swanevelt traveled to Paris in 1623 and had taken up residence in Rome by 1629, living there until 1641. Swanevelt again traveled briefly to the Eternal City in 1649 and returned through Paris on his way back to his native Woerden that year. While the final digit of the date in this painting has been read as both a ‘4’ and a ‘9’, Anne Charlotte Steland has argued convincingly in favor of a date at the end of the 1640s (loc. cit.). She notes in particular the similarity in which the artist has treated the reed bush, spotted foliage and terrain in the present painting and one inscribed and dated ‘ROMA 1649’ in a Florida private collection (for that painting, see A.C. Steland, op. cit., no. G 1, 48).