Winter in Haarlem and the Case of Klaes Molenaer

A couple days ago we rode the train to Haarlem, a small city about eight miles from the North Sea. It's colder here than it was in Delft, and the wind chill factor makes the day temperature about -6°C, or 21°F.  A north wind blows in from Norway and Sweden, bringing along scattered snow flurries.

Welkom to winter in Haarlem. 

Klaes Molenaer, Winter Scene with Skaters, n.d.
Oil on panel, 23 1/2 in. x 32 in.
E. B. Crocker Collection, 1872.629

Arriving in this season seems appropriate, however, since one of the subject artists whose works appear in the Crocker Art Museum often painted winter landscapes scenes. 

Nicolaes Molenaer (c. 1630 - 1676) was a landscape artist associated with the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, an artist's association active in the region. 


His winter scene paintings often focused on the pleasures and challenges of daily life in Noord-Holland.

He, along with two of his brothers, participated in a thriving artistic and cultural milieu in Haarlem -- a city he lived in his entire life -- at the height of the Dutch Golden Age.

Although considered by Stechow to be a "minor artist," some of the techniques Molenaer employed in this painting are part of a much larger mid-century trend among Dutch painters, including an emphasis on figure groups, the use of local color and clearly defined structural elements (Stechow 109).

Here the viewer sees skaters on a frozen pond at the city's edge. One man has fallen down. Others, on the right, appear to be ice fishing. Dogs, a romantic couple and parents pushing their children in sleds draw the viewer's eye around the composition. This is every day life in Haarlem circa 1660.

Above, winter clouds struggle for dominance over the blue sky. These blues and grays balance out the more tonal browns of the buildings below. There is no red. Molenaer is not brave enough to abandon the brown tones completely but he does a decent job of straddling the center of the palette.

Compositionally, Winter Scene with Skaters, operates on a cross diagonal, meeting at the central windmill blades. The energy of the storm clouds in the upper right is balanced by the busy-ness of human activity in the lower left. The large patch of empty blue sky in the upper left is moderated in the lower right by the weight and color of the buildings.

signature, K. Molenaer
on A Winter Landscape with Skaters, n.d.

Molenaer often signed his paintings K. Molenaer, as is shown in the close-up above from another image, emphasizing the abbreviated Klaes for Nicolaes. 

Thus, akin to Molenaer, I am signing off in order to go find some of the pleasures and challenges of daily life in winter's Haarlem.