View of Leiden

Van Goyen was born in Leiden in 1596, and in 1655 he came back to it in paint, one year before his death. By then he had lived for decades in The Hague, so this was the town of his beginnings more than his home. He renders it the way he had learned to show cities late on, a long low profile of towers and roofs read across open ground, with far more air than architecture. The buildings are pushed into a thin pale band on the horizon, and the near half of the panel gives over to water, a small boat, and the wide coastal light he had spent his life watching.