#winter

This was one of a set marking the turns of the year — six of them, apparently, though only five made it through. They were painted for a rich merchant's house rather than a church, which was still a fairly new idea. It's said the winters around then were genuinely savage across that part of Europe, so the cold isn't invented.

The Dutch painters of this moment get filed under Amsterdam Impressionism, which sounds a lot sunnier than what they actually put on canvas: sleet, back canals, half-built streets. They say the point was the city on an ordinary bad day rather than the postcard version.

This one's a print, not a painting — the credit line lists an engraver and a publisher too, so it sounds like a team job, not just one person's work behind it.

They say he painted this same stretch of river over and over, in every season, because he lived close by — and that a critic once joked his paint was so thick and glittery it looked like crushed jewels.

I couldn't find much on him — apparently he helped start a painters' group back in Rouen, and had a rough life, in and out of hospitals. That's about all there is.