A Scene on the Ice
- Artist: Jan van Goyen
- Date: 1645
- Medium: oil on wood
- Museum: The National Gallery
- Collection record: The National Gallery website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is "A Scene on the Ice" by Jan van Goyen. Painted in 1645, this beautiful piece captures life on the ice in a seventeenth-century Dutch winter. Notice how the horizon is low and the sky vast, putting us on a level with the people portrayed.
Look at the group of figures crowded into that wooden sledge - three men and one woman, whose skirt balloons out over the side. The horse is already headed towards the ice to haul the sledge across the river. And what's this? A man in an old coat trudges along beside them while his skinny little dog lifts a foot awkwardly, as if unwilling to try the temperature of the ice.
But some make a living from the weather. A man in a sledge stops to buy a drink from the owner of that makeshift tent. And look at the Dutch flag on top, lifting a little in the wind. It's too cold to snow.
The colours are muted and swiftly painted, making the distant figures little more than grey outlines, almost like ghosts passing in the mist. The artist has evoked an atmosphere rather than showing colourful incidents to entertain us. This is indeed an elegy to winter.
See it in person
A Scene on the Ice hangs in The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
