Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional Search Ir al contenido principal

Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
Visit Collection Exhibitions Activities Education Search
  • Visit
  • Collection
  • Exhibitions
  • Activities
  • Education

Thyssen - Navegación superior (EN)

About Us Support Become Friend Shop Tickets
Español
©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Aert van der Neer

Winter Landscape with Skaters on a Frozen Waterway

ca. 1650 - 1655
Oil on canvas.
61 x 85.1 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1999.3
)
ROOM A
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
A specialist in winter scenes and moonlit and twilight landscapes, Aert van der Neer was born in Amsterdam but lived in his youth in Arkel near Gorinchem, where he came in contact with the local landscapists, Jochem (1601/02-1659) and Raphael Govertsz Camphuysen (c. 1597/98-1657).

Van der Neer had begun painting winter scenes by 1641 and dated several winter landscapes in the 1940s, but virtually none in his later years. Consequently it is difficult to establish a chronology for these pictures, but the figures' costumes offer some clues. Those of the skaters and citizens in the present work, for example, point to a date in the early to mid 1650s, when Van der Neer seems to have been very active. It is typical of the artist's winter scenes in depicting a frozen, centrally receding waterway with numerous tiny skaters and promenading spectators of all classes silhouetted against the ice. On the low bank in the foreground, figures sit to watch or stand to socialise and converse beside large fishing traps and baskets. One gentleman addresses the ball in a game of colf (the predecessor of modern day hockey and golf), while other groups, one beside a vessel frozen in the ice on the left and another farther back, try their skill at this popular pastime. In the distance a horse-drawn sleigh makes its way across the ice. Along the narrow bank on the left the dark branches of leafless trees and the gables and spires of an unidentified town rise up into the icy air. More than two thirds of the scene is devoted to sky and the clouds are tinged with slate blue and yellow. Although the paint surface has suffered abrasion, one can still appreciate the colourful atmospheric effects for which Van der Neer is renowned.

In some respects Van der Neer's compositional devices are old fashioned, returning to spatial formulae that Hendrick Avercamp had introduced in the first decade of the century. The latter's additive designs, which piled skaters up the surface of a frozen river stretching to a vanishing point on the central horizon, had been superseded by the winter scenes of Esaias van de Velde and other Haarlem artists, who introduced greater diagonal unity and more natural atmospheric effects. The next generation of winter landscapists, including Isack van Ostade (1621-1649) and Jan van de Cappelle (1626-1679), preferred more intimate, focused designs centring on a few motifs. But Van der Neer, who was older than either of these painters though something of a late bloomer, reverted to the time-honoured, encyclopaedic winter scenes with their community-wide compositions that Avercamp had popularised forty years earlier. However Van der Neer revitalised these retardataires designs with original contributions, namely an unprecedented responsiveness to coloured light and atmosphere.

We do not know how Van der Neer's contemporaries responded to these inventions but there is some evidence to suggest that he may only have been an amateur painter with limited impact. Like other artists of the period, he maintained a second career as an innkeeper, and like one of his sons, was described in documents of 1659 and 1662 as a wyntapper (taverner). In the latter year he went bankrupt. The inventory of his belongings placed very low values on his paintings (mostly five guilders or less) and it is possible that he curtailed his artistic production after his business failings. At the end of his life he seems to have lived in impoverished circumstances, dying in his native Amsterdam in 1677.

Peter C. Sutton

17th Century17th Century - Dutch paintingPaintingOilcanvas
Listen
Download image Print page

Products and publications

Delaunay, Sonia

Delaunay, Sonia

17.00 €

Poster Richard Estes. Telephone Booths, 1967

Poster Richard Estes. Telephone Booths, 1967

12.50 €

Los impresionistas y la fotografía. Exhibition catalogue. Spanish Hard Cover

Los impresionistas y la fotografía. Exhibition catalogue. Spanish Hard Cover

38.00 € 25.00 €

Gabriele Münter. Exhibition catalogue. Hardback. (Spanish + English bilingual edition)

Gabriele Münter. Exhibition catalogue. Hardback. (Spanish + English bilingual edition)

38.00 € 36.10 €

Visit online shop

More from the collection

Aert van der Neer
Aert van der Neer
Moonlit Landscape with a Road beside a canal
ca. 1645 - 1650
Aert van der Neer
Aert van der Neer
Wooded River Landscape
ca. 1645
Salomon Jacobsz. van Ruysdael
Salomon Jacobsz. van Ruysdael
View of Alkmaar
ca. 1650
Attributed to Jan Jansz. van de  Velde III
Attributed to Jan Jansz. van de Velde III
Still Life with Chinese Dish. Rummer, Knife, Bread and Fruit
ca. 1650 - 1660
  • Private and/or didactic use
  • Commercial use
Private and/or didactic use
Winter Landscape with Skaters on a Frozen Waterway. Escena de invierno con patinadores en un río helado, c. 1650-1655
Winter Landscape with Skaters on a Frozen Waterway
Aert van der Neer

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

Terms of Use

The exploitation rights of the images correspond to the Fundación Coleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, F.S.P. The Fundación authorizes the downloading of high-resolution images from its website for private use, use for educational and research purposes, and non-commercial uses.

Use for educational and research purposes is understood as the non-commercial or advertising use of images in presentations, conferences, school or university work, in classes at regulated education institutions, as well as in academic publications, with a circulation of less than 1,000 copies, provided that it is non-profit.

Non-commercial use is understood as the use of the images in a context where no profit, monetary or commercial, is generated, directly or indirectly.

Any use other than those indicated above will require the prior written authorization of the Fundación.

Any request for educational and research use or for non-commercial use (including academic publications), should be directed by email to the Museum Photo Library through the email address archivo.fotografico@museothyssen.org. This department manages the worldwide distribution of the images of the works of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum and the management of their reproduction rights for those uses.

The user agrees to use the image of the website solely and exclusively for the purposes described above and in accordance with the following terms of use:

Terms of use

  • If the image is used for reproduction, the work must be reproduced in its entirety. The image may not be manipulated, deformed, modified or altered in any way. In particular, no superposition (of images or texts) on the reproduction is allowed.
  • The reproduction of a detail or part of the work may only be made with the prior written authorization of the Fundación. In this case, the credit line must include the following mention: “detail”.
  • Any total or partial reproduction of the images authorized by the Fundación must be accompanied by the following mention: Author's name. Title, Date © Coleccion Carmen Thyssen.
  • The user will send to the Museum Photo Library one (1) free copy of the edition, publication or reproduction to the following address: Archivo Fotografico, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado, 8 28014 Madrid, Spain.
Download image
Commercial use
Winter Landscape with Skaters on a Frozen Waterway. Escena de invierno con patinadores en un río helado, c. 1650-1655
Winter Landscape with Skaters on a Frozen Waterway
Aert van der Neer

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

Terms of Use

The Photo Library of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza offers sale and rental service of photographic material of all the works of the Carmen Thyssen Collection.

To request images or permits for commercial use in academic or research publications, that is, catalogues of other institutions, monographs and other specialised publications, you should contact the Photo Library by email at the e-mail: @email.

To request images or permits for other commercial or advertising uses (general publications, merchandising, exhibitions, audio-visual works, web pages, etc.), you should contact the Museum's Commercial Archive by email at the e-mail: @email.

The Photo Library and the Museum's Commercial Archive manage the worldwide distribution of images of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza works, as well as their reproduction rights. The applicable rates are calculated based on the nature and proposed use of the images, as well as the availability of the requested image.

Requests for scans or new photographs will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Once approved, an additional fee will apply. Re-photographing a work will require a minimum of six weeks to complete.

Download image
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional

Navegación secundaria (EN)

  • #Thyssenmultimedia
  • Press
  • Corporate events
  • Tourism
  • Join our team
  • Newsletter
Instagram
Facebook
X
Youtube
TikTok
iVoox
LinkedIn

The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza would like to thanks for the collaboration of:

Fundación Mutua Madrileña Master Card Comunidad de Madrid
©2025 Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

Menú al pie (EN)

  • Legal terms and use of images
  • Public tenders
  • Transparency site
  • Accessibility and quality
  • Sustainability & 2030 Agenda
  • Contact
Ministry of Culture España es cultura | Spain is culture. The website promoting Spanish culture Paisaje de la Luz | Paseo del Prado y Buen Retiro. Paisaje de las Artes y las Ciencias
Certificación de Conformidad con el Esquema Nacional de Seguridad. Categoría Media. RD 311/2022