A Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters and an Imaginary Castle

A Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters and an Imaginary Castle

A Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters and an Imaginary Castle
Artist:Christoffel van den Berghe (Dutch, Antwerp ca. 1590–1628 or later, active Middelburg)
Date:ca. 1615–20
Medium:Oil on wood
Dimensions:Overall, with added strips, 11 x 18 3/8 in. (27.9 x 46.7 cm); painted surface 10 3/4 x 18 in. (27.3 x 45.7 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:From the Collection of Rita and Frits Markus, Bequest of Rita Markus, 2005
Accession Number:2005.331.1

The artist’s family fled Flanders to the neighboring Dutch province of Zeeland. In Middelburg he specialized in precious flower pictures and landscapes like this one, where the decorative distribution of trees, the stage scenery of castle, farmhouse, and distant town, and the operatic ensemble of colorful characters seem more Flemish than Dutch.
Catalogue Entry
This painting was formerly attributed to Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634), a pioneering painter of winter scenes. When Clara Welcker included it in her 1933 monograph on Avercamp, the painting was said to bear the artist's monogram; no inscription is visible now. Landscapes by Christoffel van den Berghe were unknown at the time.
The painting is less reminiscent of works by Avercamp than of the winter landscapes painted by Adriaen van de Venne (1589–1662), Van den Berghe's contemporary in Middelburg. Both the figures and the setting in Van den Berghe's small Winter Landscape of about 1615–20 (Mauritshuis, The Hague) strongly support the attribution of the MMA work to that artist during the same period.
[2010; adapted from Liedtke 2007]

Copyright Image
https://images.metmuseum.org