An Italianate river landscape with travellers on a track

This composition is one of only two known signed and dated pictures by Bartholomeus Appelman, the other being the Hilly landscape with a ruin near a lake in the Landesmuseum, Mainz that is dated 1673. The artist's biographer Arnold Houbraken considered him to be 'een braaf schilder van lantschappen en Roomsche gezichten' (a brave painter of landscapes and views of Rome) and Houbraken also mentions that one of his pictures could be seen in the princely palace Soestdijk. Like many of the so-called Dutch Italianate painters, Appelman went to Rome and is documented there as 'Bartolomeo Aplome' in 1657. The present composition was painted after his return to Holland, probably in Amsterdam where he is documented in 1671.

The present picture was bought by the Prince of Liechtenstein as early as 1677 from the Austrian court painter Johann Spillenberger. Many painters are known to have traded in pictures.