Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Thijssen on the Ice by Jacobus Sörensen

Jacobus Sörensen · 1845-01-01

"Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Thijssen on the Ice" by Jacobus Sörensen, painted in 1845, hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It looks like a straightforward winter portrait, a well-dressed couple arm in arm on a frozen lake, until you notice his right hand.

Look past the clasped hands and the formal hat. Mr. Thijssen's free hand points toward something beyond the canvas edge. The painter showed us the gesture but hid its target. A static portrait becomes an interrupted moment.

Sörensen was born in Amsterdam in 1812 and died at forty-five, leaving a small body of work. In the mid-1800s, frozen Dutch canals were gathering places for every class, a rare setting where a formal portrait shared space with distant skaters.

The painting entered the Rijksmuseum in the early 1900s. No record tells us what the Thijssens thought of it, or whether he ever noticed the painter had caught him mid-gesture.

Transcript

Holland, 1845. Ice thick enough for a town. A husband and wife, arm in arm on the ice. He came dressed to be seen. But his right hand is pointing. The painter was thirty-three. He painted a man pointing off-canvas. He died at forty-five, still in Amsterdam.