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Oil on oak panel. Dutch School, 17th century, attributed to Klaes Molenaer.
On a frozen waterway, at the edge of a peaceful little Dutch town with simple stone houses and a picturesque church, a crowd gathers to enjoy the pleasures of skating. Some, wearing their skates, glide away toward the opposite bank of the estuary, while others push sledges, and a harnessed horse serves as a carriage. Some are chatting, others are trading, and on the right side of the composition, a rectangular hole cut into the ice allows others to fish.
Despite the perceptible harshness of winter, our panoramic scene is joyfully animated, in a style and color palette characteristic of Klaes Molenaer. The artist, who probably trained under his elder brother Jan Miense Molenaer in Amsterdam, produced his first known dated work in 1644. Stylistically, he belongs to the Haarlem School of painting, within the circle of Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael and Thomas Heeremans.
Our winter landscape is presented in a blackened and silvered wooden cassetta frame, the silvering enhancing the impression of cold conveyed by the scene.
Dimensions: 33 × 46.5 cm – 49 × 62 cm with the frame.
Klaes (or Nicolaes) Molenaer (Haarlem, 1630 – ibid., 1676) was the youngest of a family of painters. While his eldest brother, Jan Miense Molenaer, excelled in genre painting, and his other brother, Bartholomeus, specialized in tavern interiors, Klaes established his reputation through his winter landscapes. He was admitted to the Guild of Saint Luke in 1651.
