One of the lesser known artists in the Rijksmuseum is the Dutch painter Wouter van Troostwijk (1782-1810), who gave us this beautiful landscape of an icy and snowy Amsterdam. He died at 28 and only seven works of his hand are left. Van Troostwijk was not a fulltime professional: his ‘real’ job was being a caretaker in the Amsterdam Town Hall on Dam Square (which a few years later would transform into a Royal Palace, nowadays a well-known tourist attraction).
The special character of the painting lies in the strong, dark atmosphere it conveys to the spectator. It doesn’t only look like winter, it really feels like it. Another quality is the obvious delight with which Van Troostwijk painted all those, seemingly unimportant, details in his view of the city boundary, as seen from the outside. Take a look, for example, at the old lady near the Raampoortje (one of the city gates), the urinating man next to her, or at the beautiful way the snow is depicted.
Today, the location doesn’t look quite the same: the Singel canal and the Westerkerk tower in the background are still there, but the city walls were torn down in the 19th century and the Raampoortje, west entrance to the city, was demolished in 1846, less than forty years after Van Troostwijk painted it. Despite all this, the scene is still very recognizable, as people who were in Amsterdam during the last winter weeks may confirm.
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