Griffier, also known as J. G. der Aeltera or Griffier the Elder, was essentially a travelling artist. He worked both in the Netherlands and in England, where his views of the Thames and of the city of London enjoyed considerable success. His beginnings as an artist were in flower painting, a genre he left behind after completing his training under the Dutch landscape painter Salomon van Ruysdael (ca. 1602-1670).

Landscape of the Rhine Valley is a good example of the conservatism underlying much of 17^th century Dutch landscape painting. Albeit it was painted in the second half of the century, it was executed in a fashion reminiscent of the painters who had travelled to Italy in the early decades of the century.

Composed using strong diagonals, the rural houses and a couple of peasants on the hillside at the right accentuate the depth of plane. On the left of the composition, other constructions and characters are arranged in strips, together with a city on a craggy mountainside, a valley and, in the distance, a rocky mountain against a twilight sky. The silhouette of the trees in the foreground and the characters scattered throughout the scene are taken directly from those peopling similar compositions from the early years of the century.