Winter Landscape

A frozen canal curves past blackened trees and a village huddled under a low, grey winter sky, a few figures skating and sledging on the ice. Jacob van Ruisdael painted this celebrated winter view about 1665, and it stands among the finest winter landscapes of the Dutch Golden Age, a genre the bitter winters of the Little Ice Age had made into a national specialty. The cold light on the ice, the tall bare poplars and the sense of stillness have made the picture one of the artist’s most familiar and most admired works.