A Man Being Rescued from a Frozen River by Esaias van de Velde. Dutch, 1628. Black chalk and grey wa

A Man Being Rescued from a Frozen River by Esaias van de Velde. Dutch, 1628. Black chalk and grey wash, heightened with white, within pen and brown ink framing lines. In a private collection. Catalogue note from Sotheby’s website:In the last decade of his short life, Van de Velde began to turn away from the more anecdotal compositions that had characterized his earlier explorations of winter landscapes, beginning to concentrate more on the purely visual, rather than human, qualities of winter.  The present work, signed and dated 1628, seems to illustrate Van de Velde’s ability to amalgamate both of these visual traits in his work. Set on a still and crisp winter day, he contrasts the intense white of the snow, interrupted only by a few desperate foot prints, with the seemingly overcast sky, broken in places by intermittent darker clouds.Much like many of his early 17th-century contemporaries in the Netherlands, Van de Velde portrayed numerous scenes of life on the rivers and canals of the country, focusing often on the role these waterways played in the everyday lives of those who lived and worked in close proximity to them. A number of his winter landscapes feature men and women using the frozen canals in a variety of different ways, whether in the form of work or, more frequently, leisure.The present work is however a departure from these rather more typical subjects; here the artist also reflects on the perils of life on these frozen waterways.  -- source link

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