Research for the exhibition Closer (16 December 2017 – 19 August 2018) resulted in the restoration of this work's original title. In Dutch 'Begrafenis in den winter op het eiland Marken' and in English 'Burial in the winter on the island of Marken'.

Petrus van der Velden’s funeral procession moves slowly across the snow-covered landscape of Marken. The black-clad mourners and casket form a dark, concentrated mass against an expansive field of grey and white, while the village behind merges with the winter sky. The scene is solemn, yet van der Velden’s care in observation gives the mourners an extraordinary immediacy, making their progress across the frozen ground almost tangible. When the painting was exhibited in The Hague in 1875, one reviewer praised van der Velden’s “truly brilliant debut” and described the scene as “deeply sombre. It is winter on the island of Marken. Nature has donned her shroud.” Another noted the contrast between “the black figures of the funeral procession and the expansive snowfield”, concluding that the artist must have witnessed such an event “in order to render it, so movingly felt, with such tragedy.”

Whose funeral?

For many years, the story behind Petrus van der Velden’s Burial in the Winter on the Island of Marken was unknown. Recent research by Marken historian Jan Schild has identified the man being laid to rest as Cornelis Kaars, a fisherman who died on 6 December 1871. Van der Velden appears to have begun developing the subject soon afterwards, returning to it over several years before completing the large painting.

Kaars’s widow, Jannetje, can be seen behind the sled and casket. She was heavily pregnant when her husband died and gave birth to a son eight days after the funeral; the child survived for less than a month.

Knowing the circumstances behind the funeral changes the procession of anonymous figures into a particular community bearing a shared loss. Van der Velden’s extensive studies of Marken and its people reveal an artist deeply engaged with the lives of those around him, transforming a tragic local event into one of his most ambitious and memorable works.

(Timeless: Treasures from the Historical Collection 19 September 2026 – 30 May 2027)