Winter: The Interior of a Barn

Rubens painted this barn in winter around 1618, seen from the inside and open on one side to the weather. A man in a wide hat stands with the horses at the left, cattle are tied up in the stalls on the right, and a young woman walks past them with a basket on her arm. Through the gaps between the timbers, the farmhouse roofs are thick with snow.

Low on the floor in the middle, a family has gathered round a small fire. The Royal Collection describes them as people who have been given shelter for the night, which gives an everyday farm scene a theme of charity.

The picture later belonged to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, favourite of James I and Charles I, and seems to have hung there as the pair to a Rubens summer landscape with peasants going to market. Frederick, Prince of Wales, bought the two together in 1747.