Amsterdam 1585 – 1642 Norway

Born in Amsterdam to a family originally from the Southern Netherlands, Adam van Breen began working in The Hague in 1611. He married the same year and became a member of the guild in 1614. In 1617, he made engravings for the work The Military Developments of Maurice of Nassau by the printer Aert Meuris. Thanks to Christopher Urne, Stadholder of Norway, van Breen arrived in Christiana (Oslo) in 1624 to decorate the Arkershus citadel, which had just been destroyed by a major fire. Between 1630 and 1631, he painted a series of 35 pictures for the ""King's Chamber"" in Kongsberg, only one of which is known today. He probably left Norway in the year of his death, at the same time as his patron, who returned to Denmark in 1642.

Adam van Breen is of the same generation as Hendrick Avercamp, the second great exponent of winter painting. Both worked mainly on winter scenes or ""Wintertje"" in Dutch, evoking the pleasures of the upper classes on frozen canals. Heir to the pictorial methods of the Flemish painters based in Amsterdam, such as David Vinckboons and Gillis van Coninxloo, van Breen stood out especially for his portraits. The Hague was home to an important school of portrait painters, to which he did justice when he painted individual dignitaries in luxurious outfits. His sense of observation and detail mingle with subtle winter lighting effects in fantastical, improbable scenes of everyday entertainment.