The Valkhof at Nijmegen

The painting shows the Valkhof at Nijmegen, with a coach on a ferry on the River Waal. Nijmegen was one of Jan van Goyen favourite views, he painted a large number of Nijmegen views from 1633 to about 1650, but other seventeenth-century Dutch painters also painted this view, e.g. Aelbert Cuyp and Salomon van Ruysdael.

Nijmegen was one of the most important historic and patriotic sites in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. The capital of the province of Gelderland, it is located on the south side of the River Waal, near the German border. The fortified town had long played an important role in the region as a stronghold of the Batavians, the Romans, Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire and finally the Dutch Republic.