Winter Landscape with Skaters, Adam van Breen, c. 1615 - c. 1620

This painting, which has never before been described or reproduced in the literature, is a typical but not very well preserved winter landscape by Adam van Breen, as is confirmed by the monogram AB on the front of the icebound boat in the foreground. The panel, which has unfortunately been transferred to a modern support, is larger than most of Van Breen’s winter landscapes, but the composition and the figures recall those of his Ice Scene with Windmill and Icebound Boat in a private collection, which is dated 1611,1 and of his ice scene in Paris.2 The rather broad and loose execution of the figures, which is quite characteristic of Van Breen, is decidedly inferior to the unerring, delicate and transparent handling of paint in the works by Hendrick Avercamp that inspired him. This painting should very probably be dated prior to Van Breen’s departure for Kristiania in 1624. Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 33.