A winter landscape with figures skating on a frozen canal

M.E. Weiseman (op. cit.) suggests that the costumes of the figures and the style of this previously unpublished painting indicate a date of 1617 or 1618, just prior to van de Velde's move from Haarlem to The Hague. Prof. George Keyes (verbal communication, 15 February 2006), based on a transparency, is inclined to believe that the present painting is and early work by the artist, but suggests and even earlier date than Weiseman, of circa 1614-5. He compares it to winter landscapes by van de Velde in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; the Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig; and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; all dated to 1614 (Keyes, op. cit., plates 3, 8 and 9). Weiseman believes that the present work relates most closely to his circular painting Tower by a Frozen River (Stedelijk Museum 'de Lakenhal', Leiden), which Keyes dates to about 1618 or 1619 (Esaias van den Velde 1587-1630, Doornspijk, 1984, no. 81). Both were executed with a painterly touch accented with a smattering of thickly painted white highlights, and include a high cloud bank below a horizontal expanse of sky, a pictorial device encountered frequently in van de Velde's works from the years 1618 through 1624. Even closer parallels exist between Winter Landscape and the artist's drawing Farms and a Dovecote by a Frozen Stream (fig.1; Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin-Dahlem, Kupferstichkabinett inv. no. 3846; Keyes, op. cit., no. D 69), which Keyes also dates to about 1617 or 1618. Motifs such as the group of three figures in the foreground, as well as the pole-carrying skater at the right of the painting, are also recognizable in the drawing. Moreover, individual components of the present painting, such as the bare trees and the masts and rigging of the boats, reinforce its strong linear and graphic qualities. During his Haarlem period (particularly after 1615), van de Velde devoted much of his energy to the production of landscape drawings and etchings distinguished by sharp observation and varied character of line; his facility in these less formal media contributes to the charming realism of the present winter landscape.