River landscape with a town beyond

The scene depicts a wide river with a distant town on the far shore, where several sailboats and a few figures are gathered along the bank. In the middle ground a church and low buildings form a compact townscape, rendered in muted ochre, brown, and gray tones, while large, soft clouds fill the expansive sky above. The composition emphasizes the horizontal plane and distance, characteristic of van Goyen’s tonal Dutch landscape, with a restrained palette and smooth reflections on the water.