Imaginary River Landscape

Herman Saftleven

National Gallery of Art

We look down and across a river valley into a mountainous landscape in this horizontal painting. Most of the mountains, trees, and buildings in the middle and deep distance are painted in tones of ice and cobalt blue. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting. In the sky, an intense gold glow comes from the left and illuminates the clouds across the picture. A field of flat aquamarine-blue sky shows through the clouds at the top center. The land closest to us is dark brown and green, backlit by the low sunlight. A vertical, rocky outcropping rises almost the height of the painting along the left edge. Trees create fuzzy outlines along the top of the cliff, and two people, wearing red, dark blue, and brown walk along a path about halfway down the outcropping. About a dozen more people and children, along with some horses or mules, walk, stand, or sit along paths leading to and around some coffee-brown buildings at the foot of the outcropping. More people work on and around boats in the arctic-blue river that winds into the distance along the right edge of the composition.