(Haarlem circa 1628–1682 Amsterdam)
A winter landscape with a village and a frozen canal,
oil on canvas, 65 x 100 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Amsterdam, 19 July 1826, lot 40 (for Dfl. 400 to de Vries);
sale (Smith), Rotterdam (Lamme), 26 April 1830, lot 59 (for Dfl. 101 to van den Berg);
with F. Mont, New York (1962);
with Newhouse Galleries, New York (1962);
Collection of Thomas Mellon Evans, New York (1962–1999);
sale, Christie’s, New York, 25 May 1999, lot 34

Literature:
C. Hofstede de Groot, IV, 1911, Jacob van Ruisdael, p. 308, no. 1023 (as Jacob van Ruisdael);
S. Slive, Jacob van Ruisdael, A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Drawings and Etchings, New Haven/London 2001, p. 670, no. dub159 (as unknown follower of Jacob van Ruisdael)

We are grateful to Pieter Biesboer for confirming the attribution to Jacob van Ruisdael after examining the present painting in the original. A written certificate (2017) is available. Comparable winter landscapes are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and in the Mauritshuis, The Hague. Jacob van Ruisdael painted some twenty-five winter landscapes, making them a rather rare subject in his oeuvre. The present work is the biggest of these paintings.