Townsfolk skating and sledging on a frozen moat before a town wall

Thomas Heeremans was strongly influenced by the work of the slightly earlier Haarlem painter, Claes Molenaer. Like Molenaer, he specialised in winter village scenes with frozen riverside views; Heeremans' works, however, are typically of a brighter palette and enlivened with numerous villagers skating, sledging, and conversing, as in the present work or that signed and dated 1677 in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden.