Winter landscape with windmil and a house in scaffolding
Jacob van Ruisdael·1670
Historical Context
Winter Landscape with Windmill and a House in Scaffolding from around 1670 unusually combines winter scenery with a scene of construction. The scaffolding suggests ongoing human activity even in the harsh winter season. Ruisdael's winter scenes use a restrained palette of grey, white, and ochre applied with careful wet-on-wet glazing to capture diffuse winter light. Frozen canals doubled as roads in seventeenth-century Holland, making these scenes economically as well as atmospherically signi...
Technical Analysis
The windmill and scaffolded house provide architectural interest within the frozen landscape. Ruisdael's winter palette captures the cold atmosphere while the construction detail adds narrative dimension.
