View Down a Dutch Canal

Jan van der Heyden

National Gallery of Art

We look across a sunny waterway to the opposite bank, where a line of tall, leafy trees along the canal is backed by a row of red brick buildings and rowhouses with white stone trim in this horizontal landscape painting. The far bank angles from the lower left corner into the distance to our right, where it meets the horizon line near the right edge of the panel, about a fifth of the way up the composition. The water in front of us ripples gently, reflecting the white clouds, pale blue sky, low barges or boats tied up along the edge of both sides of the canal, and the moss green of the trees. Tiny in scale, a few people walk and work under the trees along the far bank. The building closest to us, to our left, has a stepped roofline and a lantern-shaped cupola. The gray spire of a church rises above the trees farther down the canal, and more red brick buildings are visible in the gaps between the tree trunks. People and a horse cross a low, arched bridge spanning the canal in the distance to our right. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed his initials as a monogram on the boat closest to us to our right, “IVH.”