Born and raised in Rotterdam, Saftleven moved to Utrecht in 1632, where he worked in a variety of different styles, creating barn interiors with still lifes in the manner of his brother Cornelis, and landscapes that resemble the works of Abraham Bloemaert and Jan van Goyen. Jan Both, who had returned to Utrecht in 1641, seems to have had the greatest influence on Saftleven, which lead him to adopt Both’s richly detailed style, his carefully graded compositional formula and his unforgettable use of golden southern light.

The master’s works are represented in major public collections, including the State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, Russia; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA; the Museum of Art History, Vienna, Austria; the Louvre Museum, Paris, France; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; the National Gallery, London, United Kingdom; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Holland; the Museum Bredius, The Hague, Holland.

This italianate landscape “An Italianate Wooded Landscape at Sunset with Travellers” was long assumed to be the work of Jan Both, by virtue of its striking stylistic affinities to this elder artist. It is only a after it left the collection formed by Sir Francis Cook (1817-1901) at Doughty House, Richmond, circa 1950, and some time after being exhibited as Both in 1953, it is presumed to have been cleaned and the Saftleven signature revealed. The picture has been painted with remarkable sense of artistic freedom and verve. However, Both’s in uence is considered to have been short-lived; there is only one other strictly comparable work by Saftleven, also painted in 1646. Later Saftleven worked at developing the style of depicting the panoramic landscapes of the river Rhine which he is best known for and which he remained true to for the rest of his career.