This painting is one of a pair of grisailles (BHC1934) in which Backhuysen depicted a bustling Indian port. The image captures a busy Dutch East Indies factory port at the height of its success in the mid-seventeenth century. A townscape of fortified buildings, with a cluster of turrets in the centre, forms the background. Ships can be seen at anchor on the right and centre. While smaller craft are shown under sail on the left. A range of vessels float in the water, their flags identifying them as both Dutch and English, testament to the commercial interest which both countries had in India at this time. Thin, deftly executed palm trees recede into the distance and hint at an exotic landscape. The upright masts of the ships echo the vertical lines of the buildings and towers. In the foreground an Indian man carries a heavy package. While an elaborately dressed man on horseback is in the centre on the right. He is accompanied by a black warrior bearing a sword and shield. Next to them a group, which comprises three men and a woman, rest on the ground. One of the men is shown smoking a pipe. The wine carafes, which are shown next to the group, attest to their pursuit of pleasure instead of work. By contrast, on the far right, an envoy in a large wagon pulled by buffaloes and escorted by a considerable entourage moves towards the edge of the water. Visible inside the wagon are two women and a man dressed in modish European clothing. Near the shore other men can be seen loading goods on to small coastal craft.

Dutch merchants had established themselves with monopoly powers in the East Indies as well as trading stations on the mainland of India and Ceylon. This resulted in considerable hostility between the Dutch and English companies. The artist has attempted to capture the admixture of familiar ships in the exotic surroundings of a Dutch settlement in India and the resulting image is particularly evocative. Although this painting has long been believed to show a view of Surat, a harbour town on the Malabar Coast, this identification cannot be confirmed with absolute certainty. Backhuysen is not known to have visited Surat. As such it is more likely that the painting is a conceit and, therefore, was composed from an array of visual sources which depicted the town. While, the principal source for the work remains unknown, there are several that closely approximate it. One such source, a 'View of Surat', survives only in the form of a seventeenth century copy by an anonymous artist, after Backhuysen, in the Rijksmuseum. This depicts a near-identical terrain, the same sturdy turrets and trees in the background and a similarly animated waterway in front. A second source is a print of Surat, from an account of the East Indies by the Dutch writer Philippus Baldaeus. Broadly speaking, Baldaeus’ image is compositionally analogous to Backhuysen’s picture: both scenes are surveyed from the same viewpoint and show the fortified city on the edge of the water. There are, however, some discrepancies in the foreground details.

Initially Ludolf Backhuysen trained as a calligrapher in his native Germany before moving to Amsterdam. There he was inspired by the grisaille drawings of van de Velde the Elder who, at that time, was famed for his grisailles and pen paintings (BHC0277). Backhuysen's move to the city facilitated a profitable association with Willem van de Velde the Elder. Later, in the studios of van Everdingen and Dubbels, he was introduced to marine painting in oils. He was a contemporary of van de Velde the Younger and shared with him a concern for painting ships with accuracy and understanding (BHC1934). Backhuysen is known to have produced few grisailles. Therefore we can assume that these two works, which depict Dutch colonies in India, are extremely rare within his oeuvre. This painting was formerly in the nineteenth century Dutch Royal collection of William II, the former Prince of Orange, who fought with Wellington at Waterloo.