Winter in Holland: Skating Scene

1645

Aert van der Neer

Painter, Dutch, 1603/1604 - 1677

Dozens of people stand, skate, play a game like hockey, or ride horse-drawn sleds on a frozen river that winds along a town to our left and into the distance in this nearly square landscape painting. The horizon comes about a quarter of the way up the composition, and the sky above is filled with ivory-white clouds billowing up against a pale blue sky. Some of the men wear tall hats, hip-length capes over jackets, and breeches over stockings, while others are more simply dressed with rounded hats. Several of the women wear wide, pleated, plate-like neck ruffs, fur muffs, and long dresses, while others wear aprons over peanut-brown and muted blue dresses. The scene is alive with activity, including a man looking at us as he balances rakishly on one skate near the lower right corner, and a young girl sitting in a sled and pushing herself along with sticks nearby. The trees lining the snow-covered, riverside path are bare and the village to our left is painted in tones of pale tan and white. In the distance the snowy earth blends into the soft blue sky and fluffy clouds above. The artist signed the work as if he had painted his name and the date on the face of a wooden fence in the lower left corner: “AV DN 1645.”

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Aert van der Neer possessed a wonderful ability to convey the activities and atmosphere of a calm winter day. Under a light blue sky scattered with clouds, people of all ages skate, push sleds, ride in horse-drawn sleighs, and socialize on a frozen river. An intense game of colf (or kolf, a cross between modern-day hockey and golf) is underway in the foreground, while a handsomely dressed couple greet equally elegant friends near the riverbank. The convivial and carefree sentiment of the scene evokes the enjoyment the Dutch derived from being on the ice.

Van der Neer had been active as a landscape painter since the early 1630s, yet his first dated winter landscape is from 1642. His early paintings bear remarkable compositional similarities to winter scenes by Hendrick Avercamp, with high vantage points but low horizon lines. In Winter in Holland: Skating Scene, signed and dated 1645, Van der Neer shifted away from that formula, as he distributed many more people horizontally across the foreground in dense groups, thus achieving a more gradual recession of space and a more natural incorporation of man’s presence in nature.

The painting also reveals Van der Neer’s fascination with light, and his selective layering of paints to convey sunlit forms and textures, including the shimmering translucency of ice and frosted surfaces as they catch the light. Around the time Van der Neer executed Winter in Holland: Skating Scene, he also became a specialist in nocturnes (night scenes), which represent another aspect of his keen interest in light and atmosphere. Although the Gallery’s winter scene portrays a bright daytime view that is dramatically different from the dark, moonlit paintings that would follow, it represents an important component of Van der Neer’s innovative and productive career.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 49

Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Video:  Wintertime Art Screensaver

Enjoy relaxing music and a series of wintertime landscapes from the National Gallery of Art's collection.  

This horizontal painting shows a group of eight light-skinned musicians and onlookers gathered closely around a rectangular, carpet-covered table. The front edge of the table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting, and seems close to us. Shown from about the waist up, the men and women’s vivid lapis-blue, coral-red, buttercup-yellow, lilac-purple, and moss-green garments fall in crisp folds. Bright reflections on the fabric suggest a satin-like material. Two women wear feathers in their hair and one man’s hat is plumed. One man, wearing crimson red and black, sits with his back to us to our left on the near side of the table. He holds the neck of a bass viol, about the size of a cello, with his left hand, and points to pages of an open music book with the bow in his right hand. The other people cluster on the far side of the table. A man to the left plays a violin; a woman at the center plays a guitar-sized bandora, and a woman to our right plays a lute. The musicians, along with a man who leans over the table from between the two women, look down at the music books. A young man behind the woman at the center holds up a glass of pale liquid with his right hand as he touches his left forefinger to his smiling lips. A man and woman stand close together in the background to our right, in the top right corner of the canvas.

Scholarly Series:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century

Scholarly Article:  Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century: Winter in Holland: Skating Scene, 1645

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Sir George Donaldson [1845-1925], London, by 1902;[1] (his sale, London, 1906); purchased 1907 by William A. Clark [1839-1925];[2] bequest 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols., Esslingen and Paris, 1907-1928: 7(1918):501, no. 568. J.A. Viccars, who explains his reasoning in correspondence with the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1967 and 1984/1985 (five letters in NGA curatorial files), suggests that Hofstede de Groot's numbers 551 and 567, as well as 568, are all the same painting. No. 551 is noted as being no. 69 in the Van Leyden sale in Paris on 10 September 1804. No. 567 is noted as being no. 118 in Madame de Falbe's sale at Christie's in London on 19 May 1900; Viccars writes that the painting was bought at this sale by the London dealer P. and D. Colnaghi.
[2] Dana H. Carroll, Catalogue of Objects of Fine Art and Other Properties at the Home of William Andrews Clark, 962 Fifth Avenue, Part I, Unpublished manuscript, n.d. (1928): 130, no. 65.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1959

  • Loan Exhibition. Masterpieces of the Corcoran Gallery of Art: A Benefit Exhibition in Honor of the Gallery's Centenary, 1959, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2001

  • Antiques to Impressionism: The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 2001-2002, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2018

  • Water, Wind, and Waves: Marine Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2018, unnumbered brochure.

Bibliography

1907

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907-1928: 7(1918):501, no. 568.

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis._ A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century_. 8 vols. Translated by Edward G. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: 7(1923):460, no. 568.

1925

  • Carroll, Dana H. Catalogue of Objects of Fine Art and Other Properties at the Home of William Andrews Clark, 962 Fifth Avenue. Part I. Unpublished manuscript, n.d. (1925): 130, no. 65.

1928

  • Corcoran Gallery of Art. Illustrated Handbook of the W.A. Clark Collection. Washington, 1928: 49.

1932

  • Corcoran Gallery of Art. Illustrated Handbook of the W.A. Clark Collection. Washington, 1928: 52.

1955

  • Breckenridge, James. D. A Handbook of Dutch and Flemish Paintings in the William Andrews Clark Collection. Washington, 1955: 32, repro.

1959

  • Corcoran Gallery of Art. Masterpieces of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, 1959: 12, repro.

1966

  • Stechow, Wolfgang. Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century. Kress Foundation Studies in the History of European Art 1. London, 1966: 93, 95, 485, no. 182. repro.

1969

  • Bachmann, Fredo. Das Leben des Aert van der Neer. Weltkunst, 1969: 1348-1349.

1982

  • Bachmann, Fredo. Aert van der Neer. Bremen, 1982: 48-49, no. 34, repro.

1986

  • Sutton, Peter C._ A Guide to Dutch Art in America_. Washington and Grand Rapids, 1986: 299-300, no. 452.

1987

  • Sutton, Peter C., et al. Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Painting. Exh. cat. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art. Boston, 1987: 39-40, fig. 54

1992

  • Sutton, Peter C. Dutch & Flemish Seventeenth-century Paintings: The Harold Samuel Collection. New York, 1992: 127, 129, no. 1, repro.

1994

  • Sutton, Peter C., and John Loughman. El Siglo de Oro del Paisaje Holandés/The Golden Age of Dutch Landscape Paintings. Exh. cat. Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 1994: 152, no. 1, repro.

2001

  • Coyle, Laura, and Dare Myers Hartwell, eds. Antiquities to Impressionism: The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, DC, 2001: 23, 69, repro.

  • Suchtelen, Ariane van, ed. Holland frozen in Time: the Dutch Winter Landscape in the Golden Age. Exh. cat. Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague. Zwolle, 2001: n.p., no. 16, fig. 1.

  • Janson, Anthony F. "Note on the Permanent Collection: An Unpublished Nocturne by Aert van der Neer." The Picker Art Gallery Journal 6, no. 1 (2001-2002): 6-12, no. 5, repro.

2002

  • Schulz, Wolfgang. Aert van der Neer. Translated by Kristin Lohse Belkin. Doornspijk, 2002: 142, nos. 7, 59, repro.

2020

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Clouds, ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2020: 108, fig. 2, 109.

Inscriptions

lower left, in monogram, first and last two letters in ligature: AV DN / 1645

Wikidata ID

Q46624778

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