ArtNC

De Momper’s Winter Landscape reveals aspects of rural life in Flanders, where work competes with pleasure. At the lower right, a woman burdened with firewood warms one free hand in her skirt. Her son, hands in pockets, carries one stick, and a smaller girl trails behind empty-handed. On the left a man empties a basket of manure onto a dung heap. A close look will find chickens scratching for food and pigs’ heads poking out from a run-down barn. Life around the castle in the background is more leisurely. A man at the entrance returns with his hunting dogs. On the ice are skaters and a man playing kolf, a game something like golf that was very popular on the frozen rivers and canals of Flanders and the Netherlands.