A Frozen River with Skaters

When van Goyen painted this small panel in 1637, a frozen river was a public square for a Dutch winter. Skaters, sledges and walkers spread across the ice, and on the left stands a tent with a flag flying from its pole, probably the kind of stall that sold drinks and food to people on the ice. A windmill rises on the far right, under a big grey sky.

The picture's early history is a puzzle about direction. In 1790 a collector in Ghent catalogued a winter scene by van Goyen of almost exactly this description, and it was sold there in 1821. The specialist Hans-Ulrich Beck believed it was this panel, but the old catalogue describes the scene the other way round, as if in a mirror, and the size recorded at the 1821 sale is smaller.

The firmer record starts in 19th-century Paris. In 1950 it was shown at the Musée Carnavalet as a skating scene from a Paris collection, and in 1997 the Boston collectors Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo bought it at Christie's in London. They gave it to the Museum of Fine Arts in 2017.