Learning from Other Painters such as Asselijn and van Ruisdael
Berchem was a master in the appropriation and enhancement of the traditional elements and ideas found in the work of other artists. Having never visited Italy himself, he did, however, experience firsthand the warmer atmosphere and more concentrated painterly style of the paintings that Claude Lorrain and his colleagues had recently been producing in Rome. The panoramic vistas of the Campagna in his own work owe their existence to the paintings of Berchem’s fellow-artist Jan Asselijn who arrived in Amsterdam, from southern Europe, in 1647. At the same time, Berchem also became friends with the landscape artist Jacob van Ruisdael, for whom he occasionally painted some staffage figures.