Leeds, Municipal Art Gallery, Loan Collection of Works by the “Old Masters”, 1889 (according to a label on the verso)

The fame of the Haarlem painter Philips Wouwerman rests primarily on his paintings of horses, but he was also a gifted landscapist.  Although the larger part of his oeuvre is devoted to equestrian subjects, including hunting scenes, riding schools, horsefairs, farriers and cavalry battles, he also painted quite simple, unpretentious landscapes in which the staffage plays a subordinate role.  Included among these pure landscapes are a small number of intimate winter scenes[i]. 

A Winter Landscape with Skaters and Kolf Players is a beautiful example of Wouwerman’s rare winter landscapes.  From a low vantage point, the viewer looks out over a snowy scene.  A bank, topped by a leafless tree, rises up on the right, partly obscuring a ramshackle old cottage and a haystack.  On the left, the view extends across a frozen waterway to a stone bridge, a cluster of cottages and a chain of distant, snow-clad dunes.  The human presence is represented by a dozen or so small figures dotted about the landscape: some play kolf, while others skate, push a sledge, or trudge through the snow.  Two men, hunched against the cold, stand with their backs to the viewer, watching the activities on the ice.  Overhead, dark clouds hang threateningly above the snow-covered landscape. 

Using a modest format and only a handful of figures Wouwerman has evoked a powerful image of winter.  There is little trace here of the traditional cheerfulness so characteristic of earlier winter scenes by such artists as Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634) or Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), rather the focus is upon the desolation of a cold winter’s day.  The wintery atmosphere is conveyed by the dark, menacing clouds, the spiky tufts of frozen grass and the bare, contorted trees.  A curl of smoke rising from a chimney provides the only hint of warmth.  Besides a few vivid accents of blue and red in the figures’ clothing, the palette is otherwise subdued.  The artist has made subtle use of the soft pink undertones that glimmer through the grey and pastel hues, uniting the overall tonality of the painting.

Like the vast majority of Wouwerman’s paintings, this scene is undated.  Indeed, none of his winter landscapes bears a date.  Nevertheless, on the basis of style and technique, this painting can be assigned to the late 1640s, or the early 1650s, a period during which Wouwerman increasingly focused on landscapes.  Certain aspects of the composition, in particular the diagonally rising bank in the foreground, bring to mind works by Wouwerman from around 1646-47.  However, the far-reaching view to the left reflects a slightly later phase in his development.  Both the sloping bank extending across the foreground and the muted palette recall the winter scenes of Wouwerman’s fellow Haarlem painter Isaack van Ostade (1621-1649). 

Very little is known about the market for such intimate little paintings, but one can only guess that they were aimed at a very different clientele from his large-format, elegant hunting scenes.  However, we do know that in the eighteenth century, this painting belonged to the wealthy Amsterdam merchant Jan Jansz. Gildemeester (1744-1799), whose celebrated collection of paintings was immortalised in Adriaan de Lelie’s painting, The Art Gallery of Jan Gildemeester[ii], now in the Rijksmuseum.  At the sale of Gildemeester’s collection in 1800, the picture was purchased by Peter Caesar Labouchere (1772-1839). The son of French Huguenot émigrés in The Hague, Labouchere became a partner in the banking house of Hope & Co in Amsterdam at the age of twenty-two and married the sister of Alexander Baring.  In 1799-1800, he moved to London, where the firm of Hope & Co had established its headquarters. 

BIOGRAPHY

The eldest son of the painter Pauwels Joostsz. Wouwerman, Philips was baptised in Haarlem on 24 May 1619.  His younger brothers, Pieter (1623-1682) and Johannes (1629-1666), also became artists and painted in the style of Philips.  Wouwerman probably took his first instruction in painting from his father.  According to Cornelis de Bie, he subsequently became a pupil of Frans Hals (1582-1666), but there is no trace of Hals’s influence in his work.  In 1638, against the wishes of his family, Wouwerman travelled to Hamburg to marry a Catholic girl named Annetje Pietersdr. van Broeckhof.  While in Hamburg, he worked briefly in the studio of the obscure German history painter Evert Decker.  By 1640, he had returned to Haarlem where he joined the guild.  In 1646, he served as a member of the guild’s executive committee (as vinder or agent).  He seems to have remained in Haarlem for the rest of his life.  He died on 19 May 1668 and was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk in Haarlem.  His wife survived him by less than two years and was interred in St. Bavo’s Church on 24 January 1670. 

Though he lived to be only forty-eight, Wouwerman was one of the most prolific and successful artists of the Dutch Golden Age.  He occasionally painted staffage in the landscapes of Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/9-1682), Jan Wijnants (1632-1684) and Cornelis Decker (1618-1678).  He had numerous pupils and followers and died a wealthy man, leaving a substantial inheritance to his three sons and four daughters.  During the eighteenth century, he became one of the most highly esteemed Dutch painters in Europe: indeed no princely collection was complete without one of his paintings.