The painter Lambertus Johannes Hansen, born in Staphorst, created this cityscape of Culemborg around 1840. Hansen was known for his paintings of interiors in the style of the great seventeenth-century painters such as Vermeer. From the opposite bank of the river, he painted a small old town under a cloudy sky. Culemborg stood on the threshold of the industrial age. A jenever distillery and glass factory had just been built on the waterfront. In the years that followed, the cigar industry and furniture making would also leave their mark on the town. Culemborg transformed into an industrial city. The river would be tamed in 1868 by a massive railway bridge. Little of this is yet visible in this painting. Cattle graze peacefully in the floodplains and a sailboat glides by.