Isaac van Ostade

Haarlem 1621 - 1649


Winter Landscape with a Frozen River and Horse-Drawn Sleighs

Oil on oak panel, 59x 79.6 cm
Signed and dated lower right: Isack. Van. Ostade. / 1644

Provenance

Sébastien Érard (1752-1831), Paris;
His estate sale, Paris, Salle Lebrun, 23 April 1832, lot 107, for 3,000 francs;
Collection Gerard Arnhold ca. 1950;
By descent to the current owner.

Literature

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters… London 1829, vol. 1, p. 195, cat. no. 62;
J. Smith, Supplement to the Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters… London 1842, p. 135,cat. no. 39;
C.H. de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, London 1910, vol. 3, p. 464, cat. no. 89;
D. H. Mireur, Dictionnaire des ventes d’Art faites en France et à l’étranger pendant les XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, Paris, 1911, p.468 (“Vue d’un Canal glacé”).




Additionnal Information

Our painting represents the very best of Ostade’s winter scenes, painted from approximately 1641 until 1647. He excelled at winterscapes in which genre-like vignettes play out against expansive landscapes stretching into the distance. At left, several trees anchor the scene and frame a sloping embankment from where two horse-drawn sleds are about to embark. At right, children engage in a variety of winter pastimes: pushing one another on sledges, playing kalf, and rolling hoops. Passages of yellow and peach pigment define the low horizon line and evoke a crisp winter chill, even as patches of blue sky break through the clouds.