Fishing in the Rhine.

Dated 1659 and held in the National Museum in Poznań, this canvas shows fishermen at work on the Rhine, a broad river that served as both a trade highway and a productive fishery throughout the seventeenth century. Rhine fishing rights were closely regulated by local authorities and generated significant income for riverside communities, and scenes of organised netting operations carried the same documentary interest for Dutch collectors as images of market activity or maritime trade. Salomon van Ruysdael's late style, evident here, shows a slight relaxation of his earlier tonal austerity: warm yellows enter the palette and the handling of water becomes more varied, responsive to the specific conditions of a major river rather than the generalised tonal unity of his 1630s work. Poznań's holding of this work reflects the eastward movement of Dutch Golden Age paintings through eighteenth and nineteenth-century collecting.

On canvas, Ruysdael applies broader, more varied strokes in the water than in his earlier panel works, using directional brushwork to convey the Rhine's steady current. Warm light falls from the left, casting the fishing boats in half-shadow while illuminating the pale sky above with cream and grey-blue passages.