This impressive canvas is one of the greatest successes of the artistic partnership between Daniel van Heil and Jan Brueghel the Younger. Working in Brussels as a landscape painter, van Heil’s specialisation spanned from vivid infernos to winter landscapes. The artist here shows his mastery of the latter genre, capturing the atmospheric effects of the light a wintery sky, with the darkening clouds suggestive of further snow, to be followed by the soft sunlight in the distance. His depiction of the frosty landscape, covered in a layer of settled snow, is reminiscent of works produced in the same tradition by contemporary Dutch painters like Aert van der Neer (1603/4-1677), while van Heil’s Flemish origins reveal themselves in the spidery branches of the bare trees, reminiscent of the famous winter landscapes of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his son.

In line with contemporary practice, van Heil populated his landscape with figures painted by another hand, in this case Jan Brueghel the Younger. Enlivening the scene with an array of figural groups, Brueghel includes anecdotal details like children throwing snowballs, couples walking along the frosty river bank, skaters moving confidently across the frozen river and others stepping on the ice more tentatively, careful to avoid a slip and fall, like the man in the distance.

We are grateful to Luuk Pijl for identifying the painting as a work by Daniel van Heil and Jan Brueghel the Younger.