Andreas Schelfhout

Schelfhout’s winter landscapes showcase Holland at its best: a fun outing for the family or even the whole village on a frozen waterway, which also serves as an access route during severe cold spells. Unlike 17th-century winter views, in Schelhout’s pictures the sky is fairly clear, the sun is shining, and an atmosphere of pleasant amusement prevails.

Before Schelfhout embraced winter as his main subject, he was especially fascinated by trees. On his walks he would fill his sketchbooks with studies of groups of trees and tree trunks and observe how the light falls through the foliage.

The result of all of Schelfhout’s observations of trees were paintings of masterfully rendered copses. The light in this oil sketch is filtered through the foliage, transforming a farmyard into a green cathedral.

Typical of Romantic style landscape painting is a wistful longing for the past. The ruins of a castle or chapel imbue the landscape with history. The woman walking in the middle ground muses, as we do, about the glory of yore.

The painter achieved his greatest success with his representations of the Dutch winter. These scenes were so popular that they were called ‘Schelfhoutjes’ or ‘little Schelfhouts.’ In them the master displayed his skill: the chunks of ice glitter like glass and the ice skaters maintain a perfect sense of balance.

Schelfhout kept track of the sales of his paintings by drawing them all in a sketchbook. He would assign them a number and list the name of the buyer. Very special bookkeeping indeed!

Like many other Romantic painters, Schelfhout travelled to northern France and England. The steep white cliffs of the Channel were a popular subject, and so very different from the flat Dutch countryside.

Seen from a high vantage point, the vast dune landscape offers a magnificent prospect. Here Schelfhout reprised famous 17th-century predecessors, such as Jacob van Ruisdael, who had painted similar views of Haarlem.

At the age of fifty, Schelfhout had reached the height of his fame. His paintings were found in the leading European collections and his portrait was included in Baugniet’s book about the most celebrated artists of the time, which was published in Paris.

Schelfhout gathered a group of young artists around him in his hometown The Hague and thereby furthered Romantic landscape painting. One of his best-known and most original pupils was Wijnand Nuijen.