Rediscovered in a Swiss private collection, this winter landscape represents an exceptionally rare subject for Christoffel van den Berghe, an artist known primarily for his still lifes and summer landscapes. Bathed in luminous silvery tones, the scene is populated by numerous figures on a frozen waterway. Their splendid costumes and the wealth of lively detail give the painting its particular charm. Both the composition and the format of the panel recall works by Hendrick Avercamp, the pioneer of Dutch winter landscape painting.

Jacob van Ruisdael’s dramatic seascape reveals the artist’s enduring fascination with the sea. He always lived close to water, first in Haarlem and later in Amsterdam. The approximately thirty seascapes by Ruisdael that survive today inspired great admiration, culminating in J. M. W. Turner’s ‘Port Ruysdael’, the British artist’s homage to Ruysdael’s marine painting.

All three paintings shown here have distinguished provenances. Salomon van Ruysdael’s landscape belonged to the collection of the Dutch industrialist Anton Philips (1874–1951) and hung at Villa De Laak in Eindhoven. Christoffel van den Berghe’s winter landscape was once in the collection of Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866–1911). Jacob van Ruisdael’s painting belonged to Barthold Suermondt (1818–1887), the founding benefactor of the Suermondt Ludwig Museum in Aachen, before entering the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin.