Lee and Juliet Folger

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We look slightly down onto a scene showing light-skinned men, women, and children ice skating on a frozen river in this horizontal landscape painting. We get the impression of hundreds of people gathered on the ice creating a crowd that extends into the hazy distance. The couple dozen closest to us are the most defined. A few clusters of people and individuals in particular draw our attention. For example, a group of three men wearing dark cloaks and hats stand in conversation on our right. Two boys nearby hold sticks and play a game similar to hockey. A small child holds two smaller sticks, perhaps to help balance. A man in the front center wears puffy scarlet-red pants with white stockings, a red jacket, and a tall brown hat with a cloud of scarlet feathers. He stands next to a woman wearing a black hooded cloak over a black skirt and raspberry-pink bodice. She tucks her hands into a cylindrical muffler held at her waist. Another elegantly dressed man in golden yellows and black and a woman in mauve pink and butter yellow stand nearby. Some of people throughout the scene wear white frilly collars and others are more simply dressed in shades of brown, gray, and black. To our right, a faded rose-red windmill stands at the river’s edge, and to our left a large house with steeply pitched and stepped roofs is enclosed within a solid fence painted with pink diamonds against black and white. Smoke rises from one chimney, and other houses and a church line the riverbank into the distance. A wooden bridge near a grove of bare trees connects spit of land near us in the lower left corner with the village beyond. Brilliant azure-blue sky is visible through breaks in the steel-gray clouds above.
Adam van Breen, Skating on the Frozen Amstel River, 1611, oil on panel, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, in honor of Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., 2010.20.1

Skating on the Frozen Amstel River

Adam van Breen · 1611 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  2010.20.1

Sixteen men, women, and children sit on or walk among seven horses against a landscape with tall, narrow trees, buildings, and distant mountains under a vivid blue sky in this horizontal painting. In the lower left corner, a man and woman approach the group, which are arrayed across a dirt ground. The man carries a large basket with chickens over one arm and doffs his hat with his other hand. Just behind him, the woman carries a flat-bottomed, wide basket of fruit and vegetables balanced on her head. Some of the men in the main group wear wide-brimmed, feathered hats, long coats in shades of peanut brown, black, and scarlet red, and knee-length pants over stockings. The two other women wear gold-trimmed dresses in shimmering orchid pink or sapphire blue. Several of the men and women ride or prepare to ride horses, which range in shades of brown, gray, white, and black. Nine dogs with brown, white, or black fur frolic, stand, or lie among the horses. One boy pours from a jug into a stemmed glass with a flaring bowl, held by a man holding a curling hunting horn. Just beyond this pair, another man, wearing black and sitting on a horse, blows into a curving horn held up in one hand, while his other hand is planted on his hip. All the people have pale pink skin except for two men. One, to our right, is possibly of short stature and he has an olive complexion. He wears a crimson-red jacket and holds a falcon on one gloved hand. The second man has brown skin and holds the reins of a gray horse near the right edge of the composition. Near the lower right corner of the painting, a potted miniature orange tree sits on a ledge next to a peacock who perches nearby. A second peacock’s head peers out from behind the ledge. A fountain just behind the group at the center has water pouring from a stylized fish’s mouth. A sculpted woman riding the fish holds up a long object while water spouts in thin streams from her breasts. Another statue stands between two tall, spear-like trees to our left. To our right, about two dozen people look onto the scene below from a rooftop terrace on a section of the building rising up along the right edge of the painting. There, a band of musicians plays while guests dine at a small table with a peacock-shaped pie, as two more people bring out trays of food. On the front face of that structure, a man and woman talk on a balcony, as a monkey eating an orange perches on the banister. A grassy lawn or garden stretches back to a large manor house, which is hazy in the distance to our right. The horizon comes about a quarter of the way up this composition, and the sky above has bright white and flint-gray clouds against a brilliant blue sky. The overlapping letters “DG” are inscribed on the rump of a horse to our left, near the fountain. Painted in red in the lower right corner, the letters “PHILS” are entwined in a monogram next to a “W.”
Philips Wouwerman, The Departure for the Hunt, c. 1665/1668, oil on panel, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, in honor of Earl A. Powell III, Director of the National Gallery of Art (1992-2019), 2019.2.1

The Departure for the Hunt

Philips Wouwerman · c. 1665/1668 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  2019.2.1

A child and woman stand at the open door of an entryway with black and white marble floors, as the child drops a coin into the hat of a disheveled boy accompanied by a nursing mother across the threshold in this vertical painting. Beyond the entryway, a man and woman look on from a room with a landscape painting hanging over a tall mantle. All the people have pale skin. The child standing with the woman inside, near the door, looks at us with gray eyes. Blond ringlets frame a round face with full cheeks, a snub nose, and parted coral-red lips. The ringlets are tied with butter-yellow ribbons and the rest of the head is covered with a white cap. The child’s garment has a wide, flaring, flat collar, a tight-fitting bodice, and a flaring, floor-length skirt. Pale plum-purple, puffy sleeves are tied with pale yellow and azure-blue ribbons, and a cape of the same fabric lined with pale grass-green falls from the shoulders. A medallion hangs from a thick gold chain looped over the child’s right shoulder, to our left, across to the opposite hip. The child touches the hand of the woman standing behind with one hand, to our right, and drops a silver coin into the proffered hat with the other. The woman’s body faces us but she turns her oval-shaped face to look down at the boy holding out his hat. She wears a scarlet-red, long-sleeved bodice with a wide, white collar over her chest. A taupe-brown apron covers her dark skirt and her bonnet is long on the sides, draping to brush her shoulders. She rests her right hand, to our left, on her stomach and touches the fingertips of the child in front of her with the other. Near the lower right corner of the painting, a small white dog with ginger-brown spots stands on the black and white marble floor, looking up toward the exchange. Light pours into the entryway through the open door and a transom window above it. The walls are light gray and the doorways are surrounded with darker gray molding. A painting of a landscape hangs above the doorway leading to the room beyond. The man and woman there look at us from in front of a mantle that is taller than the woman who stands next to the man, who is seated. The woman’s hair is pulled back under a cap, and she wears a silver-gray dress lined with a wide band of white fur. She holds one hand to her waist and gestures toward the foyer with the other. The man wears a black suit with a wide, flat collar. The floor in this room is a checkerboard pattern of white and brick-red squares, and sky-blue panels with gilded leafy designs cover part of the walls. A carved stone cherub like a small, chubby child, stands on the mantle to our left, next to the landscape painting there. Back in the entryway, across the threshold, the boy steps with one foot onto the floor of the foyer as he holds out his frayed, brimmed hat. He has short-cropped blond hair and wears a mustard-yellow shirt with tattered brown pants. The nursing woman stands next to the door, out of sight of the people inside, holding a baby to one round breast. The boy and woman’s faces, necks, and hands are noticeably tanned, almost orange. Two small children huddle, almost out of sight, in the narrow space between the boy and the left edge of the painting. They look down onto a few light tan disks, perhaps coins, on the step in front of them. In the distance beyond the family are a few trees and buildings beneath a vibrant blue sky with puffy white clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “J. Ochtervelt f. 1663.”
Jacob Ochtervelt, A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer, 1663, oil on canvas, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2015.68.1

A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer

Jacob Ochtervelt · 1663 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2015.68.1

A glass holding a loose bouquet of flowers set within an oval is surrounded by eight insects against an off-white surface in this vertical still life painting. It is impossible to tell whether the oval is an opening piercing the white surface or if the still life is an oval-shaped painting sitting on top of the white surface. The glass holding the flowers has straight, slightly flaring sides with a ring of textured knubs around the bottom third. Flowers in the glass include a white lily of the valley, yellow and purple violet, blue grape hyacinth, yellow narcissus, red poppy, upside-down cup-shaped pink snake’s head fritillary, and stems of greenery. The bouquet is lit from the left, and a ray of light focused by the glass falls across the back edge of the wooden ledge on which the glass sits. Two drops of water bead on the ledge, and the artist signed the front face of the ledge, “CLARA P.” The background behind the flowers within the oval is black. The bugs on the white surface are much larger in scale, painted precisely so anatomical details can be made out. Across the top are a dragonfly with a green body, a house fly with red eyes, and a dragonfly with a red body. A fuzzy caterpillar is to the left of the oval and a hornet is to the right. Across the bottom are a snail, a ladybug, and a beetle with a black body and red wings and legs.
Clara Peeters, Still Life with Flowers Surrounded by Insects and a Snail, c. 1610, oil on copper, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2018.144.1

Still Life with Flowers Surrounded by Insects and a Snail

Clara Peeters · c. 1610 · oil on copper ·  Accession ID  2018.144.1

Three tall sailing ships, each with three masts and full sails, float in calm, arctic waters, surrounded by fragments of icebergs and ice floes amid a smattering of arctic animals in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon line comes about a quarter of the way up the composition so the sails and rigging of the ships are shown against the sky. The clouds have ivory tops and lavender-purple undersides, and they curve in a C-shaped bank to cover most of the left half of the painting and to span the horizon. The three ships closest to us are spaced evenly across the composition, with the left-most the closest, and therefore the largest. The ship to our right is set a bit farther back, and the center ship is the farthest away. A rowboat holding several men has pulled alongside the boat to our left, and more men haul massive slabs of whale blubber up the side of the ship. Others walk on an ice floe nearby. Close inspection reveals more rowboats around and beyond these ships, and several more ships fading into the hazy distance along the horizon. Jagged edged chunks of icebergs as tall as the ships float around them. Closer to us, a trio of seals sits on an ice floe near the lower center of the composition, and a polar bear stands nose to nose with a cub to our right. Two narwhal whales with long tusks break the surface of the water between us and the ships, as does a whale’s tail near the boat to our right. Two walruses with long tusks sit on a floe near the center ship. A couple dozen birds, many white with black wing tips, fly low over the surface of the water across the painting.
John Ward of Hull, The Northern Whale Fishery: The "Swan" and "Isabella", c. 1840, oil on canvas, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2007.114.1

The Northern Whale Fishery: The "Swan" and "Isabella"

John Ward of Hull · c. 1840 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2007.114.1

Adriaen Coorte, Still Life with a Hanging Bunch of Grapes, Two Medlars, and a Butterfly, 1687, oil on canvas, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2020.16.1

Still Life with a Hanging Bunch of Grapes, Two Medlars, and a Butterfly

Adriaen Coorte · 1687 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2020.16.1

A half-peeled pomegranate, a few nuts, a bunch of purple grapes, and a glass of pale yellow wine sit on the corner of a stone ledge against a dark background in this vertical still life painting. The corner of the chipped gray ledge is close to and lines up with the lower left corner of the painting. Two hazelnuts sit near the front of the ledge, and a twig with three more nuts in papery husks are attached to a twig. Behind that, the flaring cup of the wineglass is made up of flat panels, which are inwardly scalloped along the upper edge, like an upside-down badminton shuttlecock. The stem is made of intertwining ropes of clear and black glass. At the lower center of the composition, the glistening, scarlet-red seeds of the pomegranate contrast with the rust-orange rind. Another twig of hazelnuts is between the pomegranate and the bunch of frosty purple grapes. The vine and a broad, dark green leaf arches over the grapes and pomegranate. The objects are brightly lit from our left against a charcoal-gray background. Molding under the ledge can be made out in the shadows across the bottom edge of the painting. Closer inspection reveals tiny water droplets on the stone ledge and the pomegranate. The artist signed and dated the painting in cursive text on the front face of the ledge, near the lower right corner: “J: Walscappel 1675.”
Jacob van Walscapelle, Still Life with Fruit, 1675, oil on panel, Juliet and Lee Folger/The Folger Fund, 2001.71.1

Still Life with Fruit

Jacob van Walscapelle · 1675 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  2001.71.1

We look down and across a river valley into a mountainous landscape in this horizontal painting. Most of the mountains, trees, and buildings in the middle and deep distance are painted in tones of ice and cobalt blue. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting. In the sky, an intense gold glow comes from the left and illuminates the clouds across the picture. A field of flat aquamarine-blue sky shows through the clouds at the top center. The land closest to us is dark brown and green, backlit by the low sunlight. A vertical, rocky outcropping rises almost the height of the painting along the left edge. Trees create fuzzy outlines along the top of the cliff, and two people, wearing red, dark blue, and brown walk along a path about halfway down the outcropping. About a dozen more people and children, along with some horses or mules, walk, stand, or sit along paths leading to and around some coffee-brown buildings at the foot of the outcropping. More people work on and around boats in the arctic-blue river that winds into the distance along the right edge of the composition.
Herman Saftleven, Imaginary River Landscape, 1670, oil on panel, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2016.147.1

Imaginary River Landscape

Herman Saftleven · 1670 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  2016.147.1

A tightly packed crowd of about two dozen men and women surges out of a fortified stone ruin in this horizontal painting. The building fills the right half of the composition and extends off the top edge. Shrubs and vegetation grow on fragments of architecture that loom behind the crowd. Near the front of the crowd, a man wearing a lilac-purple robe kneels, bracing the crossbeam of a wooden cross over one shoulder. He wears a ring of thorns on his head, and he looks back over his shoulder so his face turns to us. His fingers are interlaced over the crossbeam, which is tied with rope. A muscled, bare-chested man wearing ruby-red, knee-length britches and an ax tied around his waist pulls the rope. A woman wearing a blue dress, yellow robe, and white veil holds out a piece of white fabric to our right. Just beyond the cross, two men walk with their hands tied behind their back, their heads down. They are nude except for gray cloths tied across their hips. To our right in the crowd, a woman wearing a white head covering and rose-pink dress under a voluminous, azure-blue robe stands with her fingers interlaced. A second woman, in slate blue, stands next to her, looking at and pointing to her. The other men in the crowd wear turbans, feathered caps, or are bareheaded. Some wear tunics and some are bare chested. Two men on horseback bring up the rear of the crowd, under the tall rectangular doorway leading into the building. A man wearing armor rides a rearing, brown and white dappled horse in front of the crowd, to our left. Four men walk farther along the path where it disappears behind another fragment of a building, also overgrown with plants. More people, painted ghostly white, walk along the path where it curves into the deep distance between rolling hills. A grove with bushes, palm trees, and trees with rounded canopies grows in the distance to our right. White and flint-gray clouds roll across the pale blue sky above.
Cornelis van Poelenburch, Christ Carrying the Cross, early 1620s, oil on copper, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2007.49.1

Christ Carrying the Cross

Cornelis van Poelenburch · early 1620s · oil on copper ·  Accession ID  2007.49.1

An ivory-white, lidded jug, a long, white clay pipe, an open paper packet of tobacco, and a burning ember in a clay pot are clustered together at the front corner of a wooden table in this vertical still life painting. Against a deep, sage-green background, the table extends off the left edge, and the front corner almost brushes the right edge of the composition. The objects are lit from our left, and the area beneath the tabletop is cast into deep shadow. To our left, the stoneware jug has a flaring foot, a round body, a handle next to its tall, ridged neck, and the narrow opening is covered with a metal cap. The jug has an olive-green band around the base and an oval of the same color on its body, enclosing a coat of arms. The crest has three, stacked Xes, and the date 1650 at the top. The cupped, metal lid is affixed to the top of the jug’s handle so it can be flipped up with a thumbpiece. The long, white pipe lies along the front edge of the table with its bowl tipped toward us. A knot of burning ash appears to have knocked out of the bowl. Behind the pipe is a folded, rumpled piece of paper holding nibs of dark brown, dried tobacco. More tobacco is scattered around the pipe, along with the ends of broken pipes, which resemble sticks of white chalk. A terracotta-brown dish holds a burning ember at the back of the table. The artist signed the work as if he had inscribed the front edge of the table with cursive letters, “Jan van de Velde fecit.”
Jan Jansz van de Velde III, Still Life with Stoneware Jug and Pipe, mid 1650s, oil on panel, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2019.13.1

Still Life with Stoneware Jug and Pipe

Jan Jansz van de Velde III · mid 1650s · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  2019.13.1