The character of the landscape suggests that this drawing--obviously from a sketchbook to judge from the center fold--may have been made during the course of Herman Saftleven's travels along the Rhine and its tributaries.
Signed with monogram and dated at lower right center, in black chalk, "HSL (in ligature) 164[0?]". Inscribed on the verso, in graphite, at lower right (turned sideways), "LE"; and at lower left, in a modern hand (possibly that of Julius Weitzner), "Saftleven, Hermann / 1609-1685 / River Landscape, probably on the Rhein / signed, dated 1640 / Coll. La porte / 20 (encircled)".
Watermark: Fleur-de-lis in shield, surmounted by crown, (Strasbourg lily), (similar to Heawood, no. 1745: 1645) .
Laporte, G. L., former owner.
Weitzner, Julius, -1986, former owner.
Stampfle, Felice, former owner.
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Eighteenth Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1975-1977. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1978, p. 291.
Stampfle, Felice. Rubens and Rembrandt in Their Century : Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century from The Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1979, no. 85, repr.
Jane Shoaf Turner, with contributions by Felice Stampfle, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, New York, 2006, cat. no. 273.