Isack van Ostade, 'A Winter Scene', 1640s

Isack van Ostade’s little village seems to be a hard place to live. Although there’s no snow, the grey clouds threaten and there is a feeling of bone-chilling cold. The old cottage on top of the bank is ramshackle and touched with frost, its roof hardly robust enough to keep the weather out. Beside it, the slope of the rickety bridge silhouetted against the sky may be slippery – a dog hesitates, almost as if afraid to go across.

In the view towards the horizon framed by the bridge, a man pushes a woman and a toddler in a sledge while another child punts himself along with two sticks, but it all seems heavy work. Closer to us, a lad watches with concern as an old man struggles into his skates, and a mangy dog looks suspiciously at an old basket wedged in the ice. All the animals look thin – their fur damp and clinging, their heads drooping – but the white horse pulling a heavy sledge and heading up the riverbank seems a little more spirited.

The people go about their business as best they can, but seem to take little pleasure in the weather – they just withstand it. No one speed-skates or plays games on the ice. No one shows off splendid costumes, as do the figures in Henrik Avercamp’s sparkling, ice-covered river scenes, such as A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle. And yet the overall impression of van Ostade’s painting is far from depressing.

Behind the puffs of grey cloud and the chill, silvery light of the sky, there’s a hint of blue. The man climbing onto the bridge carries dead branches on his back and the small tree on the far side is little more than a few knobbly stumps – but beside it, dominating the picture, the filigree pattern cast across the sky by the big tree seems to hold a fragile promise of life. The white horse moves upwards, its head high. Everywhere there are small glittering touches of frost and the icy river glistens, bringing radiance that overcomes the drabness of parts of the scene.

This was painted in the 1640s, at the beginning of the Little Ice Age when, in the winters, Europe froze to a degree unknown before and the poor people of the countryside knew hardship and poverty. It’s as if van Ostade is celebrating the endurance of the Dutch people, but also faith in the return of spring. Such sentiments would have appealed to an urban collector comfortable in his warm house, and they were portrayed with a realism any owner would have appreciated and found entertaining.