River landscape with a sailboat; in the distance the city of Arnhem

With Arnhem's distinctive silhouette visible on the far bank of the Rhine, this 1644 panel anchors a characteristic Ruysdael river view to a specific Gelderland city known as a crossing point for travellers between the Dutch coastal provinces and the German hinterland. The Rhine corridor had strategic and commercial significance throughout the Eighty Years War and its aftermath, and images of its cities appealed both to local civic pride and to an export market across northern Europe. Ruysdael was active in Haarlem's Guild of Saint Luke from the 1620s, and his approach to river topography drew on firsthand knowledge of Holland's major waterways as well as the compositional example of Jan van Goyen. The Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen acquired the work, a fitting institutional home given the museum's geographic position bridging Dutch and Rhenish collecting traditions. The soft tonal harmony and the diagonal recession of the river toward distant spires are quintessential features of Ruysdael's mature landscape grammar.

On oak panel, Ruysdael deploys a near-monochrome ground of grey-green, over which transparent washes establish sky and water in a single unified tone. The city silhouette is built up with careful small strokes in darker value, while a single sailboat in the foreground is given the brightest lights in the composition.