Winter Landscape with Skater (1662): Art, History and Details
Winter Landscape with Skater at the Cleveland Museum of Art: 1662, brush and black ink and grey wash over black chalk on cream laid paper; brown ink framing line. Explore the work's context, creator attribution and collection history.
Winter Landscape with Skater (1662) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jan van Kessel (Dutch, 1641–1680).
The work and its context
The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:
In this drawing, the Dutch landscape painter Jan van Kessel depicted a rustic rural scene showing rundown sheds beside a frozen canal with a small village church beyond. A skater glides under an overgrown stone bridge. Such rural landscape scenes, considered fundamentally Dutch, became the focus of the Dutch landscape school in the 17th century. Van Kessel was also noted for his trees; the central tree in this image was rendered with black chalk and grey ink wash to create a gently shimmering effect.
Object facts
- Title: Winter Landscape with Skater
- Date: 1662
- Creator attribution: Jan van Kessel (Dutch, 1641–1680)
- Culture: Netherlands
- Type: Drawing
- Technique: brush and black ink and grey wash over black chalk on cream laid paper; brown ink framing line
- Dimensions: Sheet: 24 x 31.3 cm (9 7/16 x 12 5/16 in.); Matted: 31.1 x 36.5 x 0.5 cm (12 1/4 x 14 3/8 x 3/16 in.); Image: 17.9 x 25.8 cm (7 1/16 x 10 3/16 in.)
- Collection: DR - Dutch
- Department: Drawings
- Accession number: 2019.7
A detail from the museum
Frozen canals in 17th-century Holland were a mainstay of entertainment for skaters like the one seen in this drawing, providing access from town to town like roads.
Collection credit
John L. Severance Fund
Further reading listed by the museum
- Davies, Alice I. Jan Van Kessel (1641-1680). Doornspijk, the Netherlands: Davaco, 1992.
- Peters, Emily. “Acquisitions 2019: Drawings.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 60, no. 2 (March/April 2020): 20-21.
View the collection record
See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.
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