In 1966, Beck discovered that a drawing in one of Van Goyen’s intact sketchbooks served as a preliminary study for this painting (fig. a).1 That sketch is one of a group of panoramic views on five sheets which were probably drawn from the crossing tower between the nave and transept of the St Bavokerk in Haarlem.2 Van Goyen must have been facing south in order to see this particular stretch of countryside. The river in the foreground is the Spaarne, which flowed into the Haarlemmer Lake, which was drained in the 19th century to prevent flooding. To the left behind the windmill is the Haarlem gallows field, and a little further to the right is a limekiln. The building with the two towers in the distance on the right is Kasteel Heemstede.3 The composition corresponds to the right half of the drawing. At first sight Van Goyen seems to have followed the sketch quite faithfully, but closer examination reveals that he ‘stretched’ the landscape by increasing the distance between its various components.4 In New York there is a panorama dated 1646 that is based on another drawing in the same series.5 Beck dated the Rijksmuseum painting to c. 1646.6 Buijsen, who has shown that most of the drawings in the sketchbook were made in 1644, argues that the present painting must also have been completed in 1644 or a little later.7 Buijsen’s dating seems eminently plausible. The preliminary study for the Rijksmuseum painting is sketchy, and contains details which have been carefully worked up in the painted version, whereas the 1646 painting gives a freer interpretation of the sketches.8 Moreover, the Rijksmuseum painting displays great similarities to the Polder Landscape (SK-A-3249) in the museum, which bears the date 1644.9 The painting has been described as a fragment.10 It was thought that it originally reproduced the entire drawing, and that it must have given the same sort of impression as the one in New York.11 If that is true, a great deal must have been lost, particularly on the left and at the top. That theory, though, has been demolished by Melanie Gifford’s discovery in 1996 of a small remnant of the original beveling on the left side of the panel.12 On the evidence of that remnant it can be assumed that a strip no wider than 1.5-2.5 cm was sawn off on the left.13 It is impossible to determine whether, and by how much, the painting was cropped on the other sides. However, there is little reason to believe that there was any drastic reduction, given the relationship to similar panoramas from this period, such as the compositionally related Polder Landscape (SK-A-3249), which is almost the same size. As is usually the case with Van Goyen, the grain of the wood is visible through the paint, especially in the sky. Gifford believes that Van Goyen allowed the horizontal grain in the Rijksmuseum painting to contribute to the ripple effect in the water.14 It is conceivable that he did so while in the act of painting, but Gifford’s hypothesis that he also left the grain visible in his skies is decidedly implausible. Gifford twists things around by assuming that Van Goyen wanted to imitate the cloudy skies in prints by Willem Buytewech and others, because those hatchings were actually used by printmakers to suggest tone. Van Goyen’s panoramas have been compared to those of Hercules Segers.15 It is striking that in the 20th century the Rijksmuseum painting met the same fate as several by Segers did in the 17th, for in 1930 the sky was extended with the addition of a horizontal strip of wood 13 cm across, giving the painting a vertical format.16 In 1932, the conservator A.M. de Wildt discovered the addition while investigating the pigments used in the painting.17 Most of the added plank was removed after the painting was acquired by the museum. Only a strip 2.3 cm wide at the top, which is now hidden by the frame, testifies to the former enlargement. Gerdien Wuestman, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 95.