Winter landscape with a boardwalk

A picturesque wooden bridge that crosses a frozen river restricts in the middle ground a view into the depths of the winter landscape. The enclosed area of the foreground is thus claimed from the openness of the land. Human figures can be seen, yet they seem strangely lost and do not fill with their activities the space allocated to them. Here the foreground area does not act exclusively as the scene for the figural staffage, but remains part of the landscape excerpt.
Only from this point of view does a varied observation of nature in winter reveal itself: the sensitively graded reflections on the ice, which has thawed beneath the bridge, the transitions between smooth, crusted and flaky snow on the right bank, the rise with the softened, marshy-brown cover of old snow on the left; above this the masonry of the bridge, which resembles the rounded shapes of the terrain in its ruined condition – and like everything else made by human hand shows its weathered state, as if it had not actually been built but created by nature herself and subjected to the temporality of nature’s growth and decay.
The large number of details depicted is impressive, and bears witness to the almost unsurpassable dedication with which the artist has engaged with the land itself. The beholder’s eye is not, however, only directed downwards, but moves at the same time high up into the expanse of the sky, whose cool light harmonises the natural colouration of things in atmospherically subdued shades. Here Wouwerman composed an imposing representation of clouds with a marked contrast of dark and light between the two halves of the painting. Against the darkly approaching snow clouds, the icy branches of the tree are silhouetted in silvery paleness.
This work stimulates slightly fearful sensibilities, as if it were sending a signal, visible far and wide, of the existentially menacing forces of nature. Similarly laden landscapes that can hold their own alongside the poetically intense nature scenes of Jacob van Ruisdael are, however, only occasionally to be encountered in Wouwerman’s extensive oeuvre. He was primarily interested in painting horses, with fine animal motifs and elegant figure staffage. His work on this subject, from which he drew both varied and decorative depictions, had a lasting influence on all later horse painting. Jan Kelch | 200 Masterpieces of European Painting - Gemäldegalerie Berlin, 2019