With four horses, five dogs, two cows and eleven people on board, this slender ferry appears to be heavily loaded. The boats in the distance are also crowded with passengers. Salomon van Ruysdael was the interpreter par excellence of the flat, watery Dutch landscape. Here he used a tried-and-tested compositional formula: at right, a bank lined with tall trees, and at left, a body of water stretching out to the horizon.