Aert van de Neer keeps alive the tradition of landscape exemplified by Hendrick Avercamp and Esaias van de Velde, with somewhat formulaic setting enlivened by many anecdotal incidents. Van de Neer specialised in winter and night scenes; or late evening scenes, such as this one, where the colours are drained out of forms and the perspective is veiled in a unifying dusk. The artist also here tries to rhyme the forms of the landscape with those of the clouds as if everything is made up of shadows. Van de Neer's works are difficult to date; this ambitious example was probably painted in the 1650s.