Figures skating and riding in carriages, on a frozen lake with a tent and a town in the distance

Anthonie Verstraelen was born in Gorinchem, the son of Gillis van Stralen, a fabric merchant from Weert. Gillis had settled there sometime between 1584 and 1590, possibly seeking a more Lutheran-friendly environment following the arrival in the Netherlands of Alessandro Farnese (1545-1582), Duke of Parma. Anthonie became a specialist of winter landscape scenes, and today is remembered as one of the best known followers of Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634). At age 34, he was in Amsterdam, the city in which he would make his career as an artist. There, in 1628, he married Magdalena Bosijn (b. 1605). Following her death, in 1634 he wed Catalijnje Carstens van Oosten (1608-1664), who outlived Anthonie and would later remarry in 1644, this time to the painter Emanuel van Hoogenheyden.

Signed and dated 1632, the present panel is typical of Verstraelen’s oeuvre, presenting a multitude of figures skating, playing kolf – an early forerunner of the modern game of golf – and enjoying themselves on a frozen river. Since the late Middle Ages, skating had become a popular pastime in the Netherlands, but around the middle of the 16th century, a period of extremely cold winters and relatively cool summers, known today as the Little Ice Age, led such winter activities to play a much more prominent role in daily life. Verstraelen here delights in representing groups of friends propelling themselves forward on the ice in all manner of fashions, while others traverse the frozen waterway on foot or in horse-drawn sleighs. At left stands a tent, from which wares were sold to passersby.