The tableau A View of Maas was painted by Jan van Goyen, a well-known Dutch landscape painter. He was one of the most productive artists of the 17th century: About 1,200 paintings and 800 drawings of the author have survived until today. Van Goyen worked in the tonal landscape technique, which was distinguished for its almost monochrome palette. Salomon van Ruysdael and Pieter de Molijn, the artist’s peers, also created works in that style.

Jan van Goyen studied painting under Dutch masters Jacob Isaacsz. van Swanenburg in Leyden and, later, under Esaias van de Velde in Haarlem. Van Goyen traveled extensively and visited France, Flanders and Germany. Many of his art pieces are based on the sketches made during journeys in the countryside. The painter used them on multiple occasions in his works, so similar scenes can occur in several works. He sold his works at fairs himself, and they were willingly bought by merchants, owners of manufactories, craftsmen and wealthy farmers. Moreover, van Goyen was also an appraiser of art pieces and made extra money on the side by selling real estate, land plots and flowers: It was a time when tulipomania was rampant in the Netherlands.

Jan van Goyen is one of the best-known minor (or “small”) Dutch painters. Those artists created their works as interior decorations of Dutch homes, so, as often as not, they produced small-sized pieces. However, they were called minor Dutch painters not so much for the sizes of their pictures as for the motifs they selected. They regarded life from the viewpoint of an ordinary, small man, to whom everyday scenes are familiar and easy to understand. Therefore, minor Dutch artists often depicted family dinners, evenings in taverns, street dances, village mills.

In 1634, the painter moved to The Hague where he captured mostly seascapes and river landscapes. The painting A View of Maas belongs to the later period of the artist’s career, when he started to use a lighter and more diverse color array. In A View of Maas, van Goyen skillfully represented a rippled water surface and clouds floating in the sky. He generally painted in warm hues, with yellowish and bluish-gray nearly monochrome shades. The painter created an image of nature that was familiar to him: A low horizon emphasizes the river expanse, and translates the sensation of humid air.

Before the 1917 October Revolution, A View of Maas was in the collection of Tambov-based jurist Boris Chicherin at his estate of Karaul. Afterwards, it came to the Tambov Ethnography Museum, where it was entitled A View Near Holland’s Shores. In 1964, the canvas was transferred to the Tambov Picture Gallery, where it was given back its old name — A View of Maas.