The Broad River (No. 1 of a series of six prints)

Description

These picturesque landscapes sought to meet a growing demand for representations of dramatic and exotic scenes among Dutch audiences in the seventeenth century. Both was a painter, draughtsman, and etcher who specialized in Italian scenes, which he created in his native Utrecht after returning from Rome in 1641. His drawings often depict lively landscapes bathed in golden light. Here the spatial recession is accentuated by the contrasts of light and dark animating the foliage. The stronger contrasts
in the foreground, particularly evident in the towering trees, become more nuanced suggestions of light and atmosphere in the distant mountains and the sky beyond.
Van Everdingen was a painter of rocky Scandinavian views, which he completed during and after sojourns in Norway and Sweden in 1644; he also created over one hundred prints of mountains and forested lands observed or remembered from his travels. This print presents a picturesque landscape that is both inviting and forbidding. While it is animated with elements of human life such as a log cabin (right), a sail boat in a wide river or inlet (center), and a wooden church and two weary travelers (both left), the foreground vegetation and the large rock formation that mirrors the mountaintop in the distance suggest the rugged landscape’s dominance over man.