Women’s Skating Competition on the Stadsgracht in Leeuwarden, 21 January 1809 1809

Curator: This painting is entitled "Women’s Skating Competition on the Stadsgracht in Leeuwarden, 21 January 1809" painted in 1809 by Nicolaas Baur. It’s rendered in oil paint. Editor: Brrr, you can almost feel the chill just looking at it! It’s funny, it’s a landscape filled with figures, but the light... that ghostly light feels very interior. Sort of hushed, you know? Curator: Indeed. Baur captured a particular historical moment—a women's skating competition on a frozen canal in Leeuwarden. What's remarkable is that Baur focused on a genre painting but also painted it with qualities attributed to Romanticism at that time. It represents an effort to capture daily life of the early 19th century while using elements to express strong emotion and connection to nature. Editor: It does. See the people massed near the building on the right and at the back behind the competition; the whole setting feels both expansive and very constrained. Like the joy and freedom of skating are boxed in by the cold, and the social expectations of the town surrounding them all. Curator: I think the painting style lends itself to the feeling as well. If you look at how Baur handled the grayness of the sky, its effect heightens the feeling of both a stark winter’s day and a moment where people find great release. The location too—Leeuwarden’s canals and structures add a great deal to the piece, marking both a specific and very public sense of place. Editor: Exactly. Even that pale light reflecting off the ice creates almost an otherwordly surface and atmosphere; as if for the skaters everything ordinary just sort of… melts away. It does so while everything around them including architecture, social mores, and climate are ever-present in the artwork. Curator: It’s an incredibly insightful capturing of place and activity at the time. The history is both contextual, but is a visual reminder of how a piece of genre painting can hold historical and stylistic importance. Editor: Definitely, I now imagine what the painting could be, both beautiful but restrictive; much like my skating!