Winter Scene

This scene by the Flemish artist David Teniers the Younger (1610-90) is set on the snowy outskirts of a town or city. Distant rooftops and church spires can be glimpsed on the furthest horizon line. In the chilly landscape on the right-hand side of the painting jovial figures skate on a frozen pond. Figures stand around in conversation, while a lone man trudges home with threshed straw beneath his arm, his dog gambolling in the snow behind. These light-hearted vignettes belie a darker undertone to this painting. In the lower left-hand corner, a family prepare to slaughter a pig. A man holds the animal down with his body weight, while he sharpens his knife. It is perhaps his wife who holds the long-handled pan to catch the pig’s blood, ensuring nothing goes to waste during this harsh winter. Through contrasting the frivolity of leisure pursuits and the idyllic nature of this snowy scene with this episode of slaughter, Teniers captures the closely-knit rituals of life and death.

Landscape paintings became popular in the seventeenth-century Low Countries, providing idealised scenes of country life for middle-class buyers. Though Teniers was known as a painter of everyday life – and of country life in particular – he in fact painted very few winter scenes, rendering this a rare example. This work was likely painted at the height of Teniers’ success, around the time that he was able to purchase a country estate called Drij Toren (‘Three Towers’) in Perk, Belgium.