Winter Landscape with Two Windmills

Jacob van Ruisdael painted about 30 winter scenes, and nearly all of them are small, like this canvas, which is under half a metre across. They seem to belong to his years in Amsterdam, where he moved from Haarlem in the 1650s. Here snow lies on the roofs of low barns, two windmills stand at the right against the sky, and small figures are out on the ice. His monogram is at the lower right. In the late 19th century the picture hung at Doughty House in Richmond, outside London, in the large collection of old masters formed by the merchant Sir Francis Cook, who lent it to an exhibition at the Guildhall in London in 1895. His grandson Herbert listed it in the family's printed catalogue of 1914. It is in Boston today as a promised gift from the collectors Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo.