He was the specialist of series devoted to the Four Seasons and Twelve Months, which resemble panel transpositions of miniturarist calendars.

He was a contemporary of Pieter Brueghel the Younger and, like him, though in a highly personal fashion, interpreted certain engravings and models designed by Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Hans Bol. He thus remained deeply attached to the spirit and rather archaic conception of the XVIth century.

He is characterized by strict, precise graphics, a synthetic vision of nature following in the foot-path of the primitives and miniature painters, a composition with schematic lines, and great subtility in the choice and juxtaposition of the tones.

If we hardly knew the extent of his work, it may be said of him that he “simplified nature with a charming, poetic naivity, together with a great mastery of workmanship”. His pictorial style, which combines a highly personal realism of the landscape with a stylization of nature and architectures, today appears strangely modern to us.

An emblematic subject, to be sure, of this painter’s art, this composition belongs to the relatively small number of signed and dated works by Grimmer. The artist is known to have made a veritable specialty out of these small paintings with ostensibly allegorical or religious content presented in the form of small Flemish landscapes illustrating the cycles of the months and the seasons.

The winter months in particular held a specific appeal to the painter, because of the subtle play of chromatic gradations they afford between the white of the snow and the grey of the sky or water.

Freely drawing upon the breughelian model from the Landscape with bird trapping for his secular winter scenes, Grimmer created specific typologies for his allegories of the months with a religious pretext, illustrating the Census at Bethlehem or, the most often, the Flight into Egypt, which he generally accompanied with a depiction of the Joseph’s Dream.

In this case, if one would follow the biblical chronology, and assuming that this painting formed part of a cycle, it would be an allegorical representation of the month of February.

The absence in this case of the motif of Joseph’s Dreamo makes it an original composition which allows for a particularly discreet and successful integration of the Holy group. The Holy Family is quite expressively preparing to cross a bridge that will lead them to the salvation of exile. This allows them to escape from Herod’s henchmen who appear in the right-hand foreground of the painting. The latter wear Spanish helmets, a mark that, like the Flemish typology of the landscape and architecture, indirectly updates the scene and expresses the painter’s implicit political opinion with regard to the tumultuous political events of his day.

Otherwise, the atmosphere highlights the simple and domestic joys of winter pleasures.

In the foreground to the left, a mother is seen reprimanding her children who are advancing no doubt a bit too hazardously across the ice, while beside them, two children have simply overturned a chair to use it as a sleigh. Further in the distance, beyond the arch of the bridge, a couple of notables casually attempt to skate.

Similar innocent scenes of daily life continue throughout the village.

The buildings, which are simple and pared down, show the unambiguous mark of Grimmer, whose handiwork is also recognizable in the graphic treatment of the branches, and the progressive arrangement and solidity of the different fields of depth.

In the end, taking into account the gentleness of the chromatic harmonies, the stylisation of the elements which is never reductive, the delicate brushwork and the expressive characterization of scenes from daily life, this panel is suffused with the atmosphere of intense truth and poetry that is typical of the artist, and which garnered him the favour of his contemporaries as resolutely as it charms modern enthusiasts for his oeuvre.