A winter landscape with figures on a frozen river

Issac van Ostade’s winter landscapes became a speciality of his oeuvre and can all be dated to within a brief period of seven years, between circa 1642 and 1649. The painter made a significant contribution to Dutch painting of the seventeenth century, combining landscape views with genre elements. This picture is characteristically composed with a low viewpoint across a slight diagonal from right to left, looking over a busily populated expanse of space. Van Ostade is known to have repeatedly made sketches from life of the world around him and over two hundred drawings attributed to the painter are known today. Many of the motifs in this Winter landscape, like the horse pulling the cart, the sniffing dog and the little boy pushing himself along the ice with two sticks, frequently appear in similar scenes, based on the painter’s first-hand observations.

We are grateful to Dr. Bernhard Schnackenburg for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs.