Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players and Horse-Drawn Sleighs

Support The plain-weave canvas has been lined. All tacking edges have been removed. Slight cusping is visible at the bottom.
Preparatory layers The single, off-white ground extends up to the current edges of the support. It consists of some small black and dark brown pigment particles.
Underdrawing Infrared photography revealed an underdrawing in a liquid medium, also partly visible to the naked eye, most clearly so at the far left edge. The underdrawing was not precisely followed in the final painting; for instance, the kolf stick held by the man left of centre in the foreground originally rested on his shoulder.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the current edges of the support. A transparent dark brown first lay-in of the dark areas in the foreground was made. The snow, ice and sky were applied in cool blue and white paints, with reserves for most of the figures and much of the architecture, often leaving the ground exposed around the contours. Details in both light and dark paints were inserted in the final stage, some of them slightly impasted to give more colour to the figures and the buildings in the background. The reeds and other vegetation protruding from the ice and snow were also added then. A fingerprint on the end of one of the logs lying in the foreground was added to mimic the structure of the wood. There are a few pentimenti where the positions of the figures and animals have been altered, for example the head of the horse pulling the sleigh on the left.
Zeph Benders, 2022

Fair. The paint surface is slightly abraded, especially in the more thinly applied darker areas. Remains of an older, yellowed varnish are present in the interstices of the paint layer. The varnish is uneven and has yellowed slightly.

…; collection Edward Gray (?-1838), Harringhay Park, Hornsey;¹¹See the following note.…; from the dealer Albertus Brondgeest, Amsterdam, fl. 2,800, to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, July 1839;²²Lijst van schilderijen, beelden en teekeningen van Adriaan van der Hoop te Amsterdam, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), p. 24, no. 188: ‘in July gekocht van A:Brondgeest een Winter gezicht door A: vander Neer. Die zeer zeldzaam voorkomen. Zynde dit schilderij afkomstig van de verzameling van E. Gray te London voor ‘2800’.’ by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;³³Taxatie van schilderijen, teekeningen en beeldhouwwerken gedaan door Pieter E.H. Praetorius en Gerrit de Vries Jz., executeuren van het testament van A. van der Hoop [...] 29 april 1854, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), p. 3, no. 188: ‘Een winter met byzonder veel figuren fl. 1500’. on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 1885⁴⁴Provenance reconstructed in A. Pollmer, ‘Catalogus van de schilderijen in de verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop’, in E. Bergvelt et al., De Hollandse meesters van een Amsterdamse bankier: De verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum; Rijksmuseum) 2004-05, pp. 135-95, esp. p. 165, no. 122.

ObjectNumber: SK-C-191

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

This ambitious winter scene is regarded as one of Aert van der Neer’s most distinctive and successful paintings in the genre.¹¹¹¹There are several copies of it in circulation, on which see W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 174, no. 159. Numerous figures are entertaining themselves with all sorts of amusements on a broad frozen stretch of water outside a town. The direction of view is diagonally into the distance from the left foreground to the right background, and is accentuated by the simple sleigh with peasants on the left, and by the spiked pole resting on the eel basket.¹²¹²See A. van Schendel, ‘Aert van der Neer (± 1604-1677): IJsgezicht: Paneel 64 x 79 cm: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam’, Openbaar Kunstbezit 1 (1957), nos. 5a-b, for the interpretation of the basket. The latter object has an iconographic counterpart in the fisherman on the right who is spearing eels through a hole in the ice under the gaze of some bystanders. Next to this group several people are playing kolf.¹³¹³Kolf is an early form of golf in which the ball had to be hit towards a target. See, for instance, S.J.H. van Hengel et al., Colf, kolf, golf: Van middeleeuws volksspel tot moderne sport, exh. cat. Bergen op Zoom (Museum het Markiezenhof)/Gent (Centrum voor Kunst en Cultuur Sint-Pietersabdij)/Antwerp (Volkskundemuseum)/Amersfoort (Museum Flehite) 1982; A. van Suchtelen, ‘Winters van Weleer: Een inleiding’, in A. van Suchtelen et al., Winters van Weleer: Het Hollandse winterlandschap in de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2001-02, pp. 11-71, esp. pp. 26-27. The man left of centre is waiting until a skater gets out of the way before hitting the ball. There are more kolf players and skaters in the middle ground. One has a hook on his back so that he can pull himself out if he falls through the ice. A de luxe horse-drawn sleigh preceded by a dog is heading for a side arm of the frozen water on the right. As in other compositions by Van der Neer there is a town with several church spires on the left, and a stretch of countryside with a windmill and scattered farmhouses on the right.

Compared to contemporaries like Jan van de Cappelle and Salomon van Ruysdael, Van der Neer does not present an intimate, small-scale picture of diversions on the ice but follows the more traditional route with compositions in which the viewer gazes over a large sheet of frozen water populated with relatively small figures engaged in a wide range of activities.¹⁴¹⁴Examples of winter scenes by Van Ruysdael and Van de Cappelle can be found in P.C. Sutton et al., Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) 1987-88, pls. 50, 106. Van der Neer’s work is therefore likened to that of his great predecessor Hendrick Avercamp.¹⁵¹⁵See, for example, De Bruyn Kops in P.C. Sutton et al., Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) 1987-88, p. 385; E. Bergvelt et al., De Hollandse meesters van een Amsterdamse bankier: De verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum; Rijksmuseum) 2004-05, p. 93. In this painting, though, there are none of the latter’s typically humorous narrative details, like skaters who have fallen flat on their faces or through the ice. Van der Neer focused less on detail and more on the scene as a whole, to which he gave a strong unity of tone with a restrained, subtle application of colour. The figures and objects in the foreground are brightly lit and stand out sharply against the middle and backgrounds, where a hazy, wintry sun is just breaking through the clouds. The further off they are the more the town and icy surface dissolve in a warm glow. The great attention paid to the cloudy sky, the clearly framed composition and the use of aerial perspective are typical of Van der Neer’s oeuvre. Other distinctive characteristics are the strikingly draughtsman-like handling of the figures and objects, and the lines scratched into the wet paint with the handle of the brush or a similar implement, as in the blanket on the horse on the right and in the straw on the peasants’ sleigh.

Van der Neer’s winter scenes are never of recognizable locations, and this one, too, is very clearly imaginary. One of the devices that he invariably used was a strip of land in the foreground, and although it does contribute to the unity and balance of the composition it does imply that the stretch of ice is always bounded on three sides by town, countryside and reed fringes, meaning that the water was not a free-flowing stream, nor a canal running along the city walls.

Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players and Horse-Drawn Sleighs is generally placed around 1655.¹⁶¹⁶As do W. Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century, London 1966, p. 94, and W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 125. F. Bachmann, Aert van der Neer 1603/4-1677, Bremen 1982, p. 118, gives a slightly wider margin of 1655-60. Although it is considerably more complex and ambitious than Van der Neer’s earliest dated winter scenes, which are from the 1640s, the assignment to the mid-1650s seems to have been dictated largely by the unproven hypothesis that that was his most successful and productive period. However, the composition, which is still fairly traditional, consisting as it does of a general view with smallish figures, would seem to point to a relatively early origin, and that also applies to the framing device of a small group of tall bare trees on the right. The detailing, though, betrays the hand of a mature artist. A date in the early 1650s could be proposed on the evidence of the dress of the foreground group of kolf players. The broad collars draped over the shoulders of the three elegantly clad gentlemen came into fashion around then.¹⁷¹⁷For these collars see J.H. der Kinderen-Besier, Spelevaart der mode: De kledij onzer voorouders in de zeventiende eeuw, Amsterdam 1950, pp. 135-36. The long, wavy hair and the breeches with long open legs are also typical of that time,¹⁸¹⁸J.H. der Kinderen-Besier, Spelevaart der mode: De kledij onzer voorouders in de zeventiende eeuw, Amsterdam 1950, pp. 134-37. so it seems plausible that Van der Neer painted the scene between 1650 and 1655.

Erlend de Groot, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, VII, Esslingen/Paris 1918, p. 477, no. 479; W. Stechow, Dutch Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century, London 1966, pp. 93-94; F. Bachmann, Aert van der Neer 1603/4-1677, Bremen 1982, pp. 98, 117-18; De Bruyn Kops in P.C. Sutton et al., Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Boston (Museum of Fine Arts)/Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art) 1987-88, pp. 384-85; W. Schulz, Aert van der Neer, Doornspijk 2002, p. 125, no. 3, with earlier literature

1887, p. 121, no. 1016; 1903, p. 191, no. 1720; 1934, p. 205, no. 1720; 1960, p. 224, no. 1720; 1976, p. 410, no. C 191

Erlend de Groot, 2022, 'Aert van der Neer, Winter Landscape near a Town with Kolf Players and Horse-Drawn Sleighs, c. 1650 - c. 1655', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4708