Winter Sports on a Frozen River (Primary Title)
Aert Van Der Neer, Dutch, 1603-1677 (Artist)
Van der Neer specialized in nighttime and winter landscapes; he excelled at painting weather and light. At midcentury, he revived the monumental ice-skating scene, a genre first developed in Flanders in the late 1500s. Such high, broad viewpoints let the artist fill the picture with anecdotal detail. In this early painting, van der Neer experimented with technique. The underdrawing visible beneath the thin paint reveals the artist’s significant changes as his work progressed. While the paint was still wet, he used the butt of his brush to scratch in background details and tree branches that add to the wintry impression.
Signed with monogram, lower left: "AVDN"
Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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