Here we see Johann Caspar Zehender’s monochromatic ink drawing of a riverside village. A group of figures fishes in the foreground, while others are scattered across the river bank. The image presents us with the motif of the river, which has coursed through human imagination since time immemorial. We see the river as border and as passage in ancient Egyptian art, as a symbol of purification in religious iconography, and, as it is here, a symbol of bucolic calm. This motif, deeply embedded in our collective memory, reappears in countless forms, each echoing and reshaping its predecessors. We see an echo of the psychological pull exerted by the river in Zehender's work reflected in the Romantic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, two generations later. The cyclical nature of images reveals how symbols are never truly new, but rather constantly reborn through the ages.