Landscape with Frozen Canal, Skaters and an Ice-Boat

The support is a single horizontally grained oak panel that has been planed down and cradled. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1577. The panel could have been ready for use by 1586, but a date in or after 1596 is more likely. There is an off-white ground with a grey imprimatura. The painting was executed from the back to the front, without reserves.

Fair. There is a great deal of abrasion and overpainting in the sky. The varnish is very discoloured.

...; sale, Henry North, Earl of Sheffield (†) et al. [anonymous section], London (Christie’s), 11 December 1909, no. 134, £ 89 5s, to the dealer J. Glen, London; from whom, fl. 1,210, to the museum, 1910

ObjectNumber: SK-A-2510

The foreground of this ice scene is dominated by an ice-boat with elegantly clad passengers and a Dutch flag on the afterdeck. A print by Christoffel van Sichem shows a similar kind of vessel, a ‘schuyt die op ijsers staet’ (‘boat standing on runners’).¹¹Hollstein, XXVII, 1983, p. 31, no. 133; illustrated in Van Straaten 1977, p. 61. The text under the print states that Prince Maurits had already gone for a ride in one in 1610. This was a new invention along the lines of the ‘land-yacht’.²²See the engraving by Willem van Swanenburg after Jacques de Gheyn II of 1603; Hollstein XXIX, 1984, pp. 25-26, no. 27. It is not surprising that ice-boats were so popular in the bitterly cold winters of 1610 and 1611, for it froze for three months on end, and the ice must have been very thick.³³Sutton in Amsterdam etc. 1987, pp. 510-11. Those winters must also have contributed to the success of painted ice scenes.

This work is based on a considerably better one⁴⁴Private collection, panel, 52 x 100 cm; see Amsterdam etc. 1987, pp. 510-11, no. 111. formerly attributed to Adriaen van de Venne⁵⁵Bol 1969, p. 157. and more recently to David Vinckboons,⁶⁶Haverkamp-Begemann 1983, p. 386; Sutton in Amsterdam etc. 1987, pp. 510-11, no. 111. which was evidently very popular, judging by the number of copies made after it.⁷⁷Sutton in Amsterdam etc. 1987, p. 511, note 4, lists four copies including the present painting.

The Rijksmuseum painting differs in many details from the prototype by Vinckboons, and must have been made shortly after it. Van Breen retained the key motifs of the ice-boat on the left, the elegantly dressed figures in the foreground and the castle on the right, but he omitted the farmhouse on the left, considerably curtailed the number of figures in the middleground, placed his horizon lower down, reducing the sense of depth, and eliminated the ice-boat in the background. The figures are more slender and less linear, as they are in Van Breen’s other paintings. Another work by him, signed and dated 1611, is an Ice Scene with Windmill and Icebound Boat in a private collection.⁸⁸Panel, 46 x 68 cm; illustrated in Van Gelder/Van Gelder-Schrijver 1932, p. 113, fig. 1 (with Dr Nicolaas Beets, Amsterdam), and Bol 1982, p. 148 (with Douwes, Amsterdam). That painting has similar figures and attributes, and the same city (possibly Haarlem) in the blue distance. With their lowered horizons, these paintings of 1611 represent a subsequent stage in the line of development from the Vinckboons version and Hendrick Avercamp’s Winter Landscape with Skaters (SK-A-1718) in the Rijksmuseum. One striking detail in this painting is the oversized horse’s skull and the bones in the right foreground, where Vinckboons had a barrel with a small skull. The skull can be seen as a vanitas symbol alluding to life’s fragility, and it also stands for winter in general, the time when animals were slaughtered. Transience (the ‘slipperiness’ of life) is a subject that was frequently associated with ice and skating in emblem books and prints.⁹⁹See, among others, Van Straaten 1977, pp. 43-48; De Jongh in Amsterdam 1997, pp. 49-53, no. 2. The fashionably dressed onlookers in the foreground, who are a literal borrowing from Vinckboons, can also be seen as vanitas motifs, with their plumed hats and extravagant costumes. Primarily, though, they illustrate the modish fashions of the day, as they do in Van Breen’s painting of Prince Maurits (SK-A-955) and in Avercamp’s ice scenes.¹⁰¹⁰The woman seen in profile is wearing a flat, two-layered standing collar that is supported by a small ‘fraise’ (supportasse) or ‘portefraes’ (underpropper) for which see Van Thienen 1969.

Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 31.

Van Gelder/Van Gelder-Schrijver 1932, pp. 111, 114, no. 2; Van Thienen 1969, p. 486; Sutton in Amsterdam etc. 1987, pp. 510-11, no. 11

1912, p. 348, no. 619A; 1918, p. 63, no. 619a; 1934, p. 61, no. 619a; 1960, p. 57, no. 619 A1; 1976, p. 143, no. A 2510; 1992, p. 45, no. A 2510 (as copy after David Vinckboons); 2007, no. 31

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Adam van Breen, Landscape with Frozen Canal, Skaters and an Ice-Boat, 1611', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6235