The rich tradition of winter landscape painting in seventeenth-century Holland was forged by painters such as Hendrick Avercamp and Isaack van Ostade, from whom Andries Vermeulen would subsequently draw inspiration in the following century. Lively and cheerful scenes of skaters and villagers going about their business on the frozen waterways of Holland during the era’s Little Ice Age enjoyed an enduring popularity, and this ambitious composition demonstrates Vermeulen’s mastery of the genre.

Born in Dordrecht, Vermeulen trained under his father, the landscape painter Cornelis Vermeulen, before working for a period in Amsterdam. Unlike Avercamp’s depictions of richly-attired wealthy townsfolk at leisure, socialising and playing kolf, Vermeulen here employs a more modest cast for his staffage, with villagers bundled up against the cold, sitting by an upturned barrel or heaving their load on a sledge across the ice. Working on a grand scale, he renders the expansive foreground in crisp, silvery tones which retreat to a warmer, luminous horizon in the distance, animated by the typically charming figures and anecdotal details that contributed to the subject matter's lasting appeal.