Day 392 - Dutch landscapes

 



December 31, 2024

\Gallery 615 takes us outdoors again. The introductory signage points out that Dutch landscape painting of the mid-17th century reflected a new sense of nationhood that developed as part of the struggle for independence from Spain. I wonder if landscapes painting, emphasizing as it did expanses of land and even more dramatic expanses of sky, also helped to forge that sense of national identity,  But I'm surprised that so many of the scenes show hillocks and rises in the land - quite different from my flat-as-a-pancake vision of the Netherlands.

At first, I thought I'd write about a van Ruisdael painting that immediately caught my eye because of its large size and prominent placement in the gallery, and because it exemplifies the scenes of immense, lowering skies that I associate with van Ruisdael.   But as I'm finishing making my rounds of the gallery, I spot a small (perhaps 14 inches wide and 10 inches high) painting by an artist I've never heard of before, Aert van der Neer, that absolutely enchants me.  Called "Sports on a Frozen River" and painted around 1660, it depicts a group of villages diverting themselves on a frozen body of water that recedes into the distance and is lined on one side by the villagers' snow-topped homes and on the other by a mass of trees. The palette is one of browns and grays except for the pink and melon tones of the sky at sunset and the bright gold of the sun that has almost fallen below the horizon and is reflected in the ice.  Minuscule but distinct figures of villagers skate or play a game that resembles ice hockey or just kibitz.The painting makes winter look like fun! Somehow, there's something monumental to me about this little work in the way that it captures life. I note that it was bequeathed to the Met in 1931. If I owned this painting, I would want to look at this painting every day and wouldn't give it away during my lifetime.


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