Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters on a Frozen River

Andries Vermeulen

1814

625x68em.

Oil on oak panel with parquetry backing

unknown

Private collection

Andries Vermeulen was born in Dordrecht in 1763, the son of the landscape painter Cornelis
Vermevien (1732-1813).1 Andries was initially taught by his father, who Instructed him to copy
seventeenth.century paintings, especially the works of Albert Cuyp and Meindert Hobbema, with
whom the young artit identified deeply. He was further educated by Thomas Gaal, director of the
“Teekenakademie’ (drawing academy).

1n 1803 the Amsterdam wine merchant Willem Wreesman gave Vermeulen the important
commission to paint a panorama of Amsterdam, inspired by the panorama of Paris by Pierre
Prévost and measuring 7 by 52 metres, with a diameter of 17 metres. The project was much
delayed and remained unfinished at the time of Vermeuler's death in 1814, when it was
completed by the landscape painters Willem Uppink and Cornelis de Kru.

Our landscape by Vermeulen is among the artist's most refined and sophisticated worl. It can for
instance be compared to a Mountainous Landscape in the collection of the Dordrechts Museu.
Other paintings by Vermeulen are preserved in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Staatliche
Kunsthalle in Karsruhe and the National Galery, London.