Winter landscape – Franz Edmund Weirotter after Jan van Goyen, c. 1760

“L’hiver” (The Winter), etching from a series of 4 seasons made around 1760 by Franz Edmund Weirotter after a drawing by Jan van Goyen, published in Paris by Gabriel Huquier. Size (plate mark): 22.5 x 31.4 cm.

In this winter landscape with skaters, two men drag a sled loaded with hay across the ice. The large, bare tree in the center emphasizes the wintry atmosphere. In the background, we see a church and a few houses, with boats trapped in the ice. The sky is cloudy, and nightfall is near. Jan van Goyen is renowned for the atmospheric quality of his work.

When Van Goyen created the drawing around 1625 after which this etching was made, he was continuing a long tradition. As early as the Middle Ages, artists depicted the seasons through landscapes showing people engaged in typical seasonal activities.

Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) was a prolific Dutch landscape artist who according to J. Immerzeel in 1864 “strictly adhered to nature; all his representations delight with the truth they convey. Villages, dikes, coasts, shores, seas, and rivers – everything of this kind that he encountered around his places of residence, Leiden and The Hague, and found picturesque, he depicted from observation. Through his inexhaustible ingenuity, he managed to imbue all these scenes with life and movement by adding vessels – sailing, rowing, unloading, or loading – and a multitude of distinctive details, such as figures, horses, etc. His method of painting was incomparably beautiful, especially in the perspectives, skies, and the reflecting and churning waters.”

Franz Edmund Weirotter (1733-1771) received his education in Innsbruck, Vienna, Regensburg, Mainz, and Paris, where he encountered the German engraver Johann Georg Wille in 1779. With Wille, Weirotter learned engraving. Despite his short life, he left an impressive oeuvre of 288 etchings, nearly all of which were landscapes.

Price: SOLD