Arent Arentsz., Fishermen near Muiden Castle

In this tiny picture, Arent Arentsz. shows a fisherman in heavy boots with his rod over his shoulder, his catch – or his dinner – hanging from it in a canvas bag. The small basket in his left hand probably holds bait.

This sturdy man, his fur hat at a rakish angle, looks back at a young lad pouring a considerable catch of tiny fish from a large pitcher into a bowl, while an older man stands waiting with a similar bowl in his hands. Between them a short, arched bridge crosses a creek, and Arentsz. takes pains to show the running water, the pebbles, the palings that support the bridge and the bank of the stream.

The three fishermen are arranged like a frieze across the foreground, the misty view behind them appearing quite separate, almost like a stage backcloth. There’s a lot going on: small craft speed along in the breeze – a breeze that leaves the three fishermen untouched – while a larger boat is anchored mid-stream, and two boys row a little boat, trailing a net for fish. But all this activity is rendered incidental to the main actors – the fishermen – by the strong contrast between their well-defined garments, poses and expressions and the hazy, almost two-dimensional background.

Even Muiden Castle, on the far bank of the river and featured in the picture’s title, is ghostlike and indistinct, though accurately portrayed. In 1630, rather than the fortress it was built to be in the fourteenth century, it was the centre of cultural life in Holland. Some seven miles from Amsterdam, where the River Vecht enters the Zuiderzee, it was the gathering place for intellectuals and connoisseurs, a group known as the Muiderkring (‘The Muider Circle’).

Arentsz. shows the castle from the west. In Jan Beerstraaten’s The Castle of Muiden in Winter the building is portrayed from the north-east, and in a very different mood – black clouds threatening and the light eerie. But both artists took liberties with the actual landscape: Beerstraaten moved a view of the sea from behind the castle to the front and a little to the left of it, while Arentsz. shifted what is thought to be Muiderburg church from the left to the right of the castle. This wasn't an unusual artistic device for landscape painters wanting to perfect the balance of their pictures. Even at a time when realism was paramount, the artistry of the composition was more important than reality.