Bij Doesborgh (Landschap).

Willem Roelofs's 'Bij Doesborgh (Landschap)' (Near Doesburg, Landscape, 1889) depicts the landscape around Doesburg on the IJssel River — one of the Dutch landscape's most historically layered areas, the old Hanseatic trading town on the river creating a combination of historic built environment and the agricultural polder that surrounded it. Roelofs's engagement with the specific topography of the Dutch landscape extended across its varied regional character, and his Doesborgh subject brought his atmospheric sensitivity to this eastern Dutch landscape.

Roelofs renders the Doesborgh landscape with his characteristic atmospheric control — the flat Dutch polder under the vast Dutch sky creating the compositional structure that was his consistent subject world. His handling of the specific light conditions of the eastern Netherlands, with its slightly different atmospheric quality from the coastal provinces, creates the landscape's particular character. The spatial recession across the flat land toward the distant horizon gives the composition its Dutch spatial grandeur.