How you can use this image
This image can be used for non-commercial research or private study purposes, and other UK exceptions to copyright permitted to users based in the United Kingdom under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended and revised. Any other type of use will need to be cleared with the rights holder(s).
Review the copyright credit lines that are located underneath the image, as these indicate who manages the copyright (©) within the artwork, and the photographic rights within the image.
The collection that owns the artwork may have more information on their own website about permitted uses and image licensing options.
Review our guidance pages which explain how you can reuse images, how to credit an image and how to find images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons licence available.
Buy a print or image licence
You can purchase this reproduction
If you have any products in your basket we recommend that you complete your purchase from Art UK before you leave our site to avoid losing your purchases.
Notes
Add or edit a note on this artwork that only you can see. You can find notes again by going to the ‘Notes’ section of your account.
From the 1640s to the 1660s the Low Countries experienced a series of severe winters, and canals and rivers froze hard for weeks at a time. This wintry transformation of the towns and landscapes caught the imagination of many local artists, and Aert van der Neer was one of those who specialised in such scenes. This image of an unknown town is one of dozens of similar landscapes which van der Neer made around this time. Here he seems to have relished evoking the deep ice-green surface of the river as it reflects back a dramatic sky. Dark clouds tinged with the russet from an unseen sunset billow up like smoke from behind the buildings, and high above, dark sweeping brushstrokes suggest a wind is blowing up. The figures here are types, carefully positioned for effect, rather than representing a snapshot of people at a real moment in time.
Title
A Frozen River by a Town at Evening
Date
about 1665
Medium
Oil on wood
Measurements
H 26.4 x W 40.5 cm
Accession number
NG969
Acquisition method
Wynn Ellis Bequest, 1876
Work type
Painting
The National Gallery, London
Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England
-
Moonlight and River Scene Victoria and Albert Museum -
A Canal in a Dutch Town by Moonlight English Heritage, Brodsworth Hall -
A Village and Marshland by Moonlight Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (GMRC) -
Dutch Town on a River by Moonlight Lotherton Hall, Leeds Museums and Galleries -
River View: Evening English Heritage, The Wellington Collection, Apsley House -
Winter Landscape Ashmolean Museum, Oxford -
A River Scene with a Windmill National Trust, Penrhyn Castle - 59 more
