Limited for the most part to a few shades of grey, green and brown and thus almost monochrome in character, this work dating from the final decade of Jacob van Ruisdael’s life condenses the atmosphere of a cold, dreary winter day. On the edge of the road to Haarlem, the lantern post in the foreground appears lost in a no-man’s land; it takes on a symbol-like quality and contributes considerably to the melancholy mood. The dramatic staging of individual motifs which thus become accentuating protagonists of his carefully composed landscapes is typical of Ruisdael – one of the mid seventeenth century’s most important as well as most influential Dutch landscapists.