Winter Landscape at Arnhem

Salomon van Ruysdael painted rivers and estuaries for most of his career, and only about 20 winter scenes by him are known. He came back to the ice in the early 1650s, and this panel carries the date 1653, painted on the side of the sleigh together with his initials.

The frozen river runs past a walled town with a squat tower and two pointed spires, which the museum calls Arnhem. Everyone is out on the ice. A horse pulls a sleigh crowded with passengers, another team waits beside a tent on the left, and in the foreground men with clubs play kolf, a Dutch game of club and ball on the ice. Close to them one skater has just lost his footing and gone down.

The painting came to the Mauritshuis in 2002, a gift from the collector Willem van Dedem to the museum's Friends.