Jacobus van der Stok artwork • painting • previously for sale A frozen canal with skaters and koek-en-zopie food stalls

Jacobus van der Stok was a contemporary of Andreas Schelfhout and a pupil of the Leiden painter A.J. Besters. He excelled in painting summer landscapes and ice scenes staffaged with skaters. Van der Stok had the curious habit of hiding his signature in his paintings by putting it in an unusual place, camouflaging it in colour or even writing it from below upwards. Especially his work from the 1820s and early 1830s is very similar to Schelfhout’s from the same period. Van der Stok taught, among others, Cornelis Springer, Matthias Parré and his daughter Jacoba van der Stok, the painter of floral still lifes.