18th Century Ice Skating

Last updated: Jan 16, 2025

(A page on ice skating and skates from the Middle Ages and Renaissance is available elsewhere on this site.)

• La Hollandoise sur les patins after Cornelis Dusart
• Fille de petit bourgois d’Amstredã, gliſant avec des patins by Bernard Picart, c. 1695-1730
• A tile with an ice skater
• Winter by Jan Josef Horemans
• View of Gentilly, after 1730
• January: skaters on the ice by Jan Caspar Philips
• Winter by Nicolas Lancret, 1738
• Winter by Nicolas de Larmessin IV, after Nicolas Lancret
• Fastening the Skate by Nicolas Lancret
• Divertissemens des Hollandois pendant la Gelée
• Porcelain figure group with a man and woman putting on skates, c. 1760
• Three skaters by Albertus Jacobus Besters
• Winter landscape by Rienk Jelgerhuis, 1765
• A Swedish skate made c. 1770: “Flat wood platforms, leather heel cups. Solid iron runners with moderate turn-up.”
• Skaters (and sled-riding) around Carriage-Ride on the Ice in Des Elementarbuchs für die Jugend illustrated by Daniel Chodowiecki, 1770; this seems to be the basis for a later 18th century illustration of a winter scene with figures on the ice (H/T Paul Dickfoss)
• Entries from Philip Vickers Fithian’s journal:
  “M^r. Cunningham came before noon to skait — At twelve we all went down to M^r. Carters Millpond — none had skaits but M^r. Cunningham — we diverted ourselves on the Ice til two, when we went up to Dinner.” (January 13, 1774)
  “The Parson, M^r. Blain, Cunningham, Ballantine, & others are to come to Captain Turburville’s Mill-Pond to Skate before they go to the Ball.” (January 16, 1774)
• Skating in Hyde Park by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm
• Skaters on a canal beside a country house by Jan Schoute
• A winter scene with figures on the ice
• Januarius et Februarius
• Drawing of a young man skating and another who has just fallen down behind him by John Hamilton Mortimer, c. 1760-1779
• Frozen canal with skaters by Cornelis van Noorde, 1769
• The IJ in winter with skaters near the Nieuwe Stadsherberg by Hendrik Keun, 1769
• Frost fair on a frozen river with ships by Hendrik Kobell, 1773
• IJsvermaak in het dorp Kortenhoef by Cornelis van Noorde, 1776
• The Pleasures of Skaiting - or, a View in Winter, c. 1780; also in a hand-colored mezzotint
• Winter landscape with skaters by Jacob Cats, 1781
• The Skater (Portrait of William Grant) by Gilbert Stuart, 1782
• Kinders hier hebt gy tot u playsier / Van Jan en Lijs op 't ys vol zwier, c. 1782-1793
• Winter scene with a man skating on a frozen lake by David Deuchar, c. 1782-1803
• Skating in Hyde Park by Julius Caesar Ibbetson, c. 1785
• Study of skaters by Julius Caesar Ibbetson, c. 1785-1786
• Skating on the Serpentine by Thomas Rowlandson, 1786
• Winter Amusement: A View in Hyde Park from the Sluice at the East End after Julius Caesar Ibbetson, 1787
• Ah mon Dieu qu'il fait froid!!! - a drawing of a young woman holding a muff, with skaters and a tent in the background, attributed to Étienne Jeaurat
• Winter landscape with skaters by Jacob Ernst Marcus, 1789
• Skating on the Serpentine by Thomas Rowlandson, before 1790
• Skating on the Serpentine, Hyde Park by Thomas Rowlandson
• Picturesque Etchings including the River, Towing Barges and other Rural Studies by Thomas Rowlandson, 1790
• Picturesque Studies and scenes of everyday life and people by Thomas Rowlandson, 1790
• Pieter Magito, 1790
• Skaters of varying competence on a frozen river, some to right and left sitting at stalls and having skates fitted, by Thomas Rowlandson, c. 1790-1800
• Figures skating while spectators watch by Isaac Cruikshank, c. 1790-1811
• Skating by George Morland, 1792
• A pair of ice skates that belonged to Isaac LeFevre in New Paltz, New York; “Each skate consists of a metal blade mounted to a wooden platform. Leather straps and buckles secured the skates to the soles of shoes or boots.” On January 28, 1793, he wrote in his diary that “I wove and went to Springtown + to Sister Jane’s and Return’d home on Scates,” and the next day, “This Day it was Cloud-y I wove + went to D.D.B. + J. Hasb. and from thence on Scates to Springtown at Night thro’ the snow.”
• Revd Dr Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch by Sir Henry Raeburn, c. 1795
• Bertrand Andrieu by Pierre-Maximilien Delafontaine, 1798
• Push-sled by Anthony Andriessen
• IJsvermaak by Albertus Jacobus Besters
• Kneeling woman tying on her skates by François Joseph Pfeiffer the younger
• Drawing of a young woman fastening her skates by Jacobus Johannes Lauwers
• Dutch winter landscapes with skaters on frozen rivers, including British Museum 1931,1114.145, 1931,1114.147, 1931,1114.149, 1931,1114.150, 1931,1114.151, 1931,1114.152
• Winter, 1800: “An elderly man has fallen heavily in the right foreground, losing his wig and starring the ice. Two young men cut figures. Behind are spectators, a man putting on skates, and a tent.”
• Skating Lovers, 1800
• Winter by Richard Corbould, c. 1802
• Le Suprême Bon Ton, c. 1802
• Le Goût du Jour N^o. 6, c. 1802
• Ziet hier wat Jonge Knepen ſpelen, 1806
• Herfst. Winter.
• Winter by Jacques Philippe Loutherbourg II
• De kindren zyn altoos genegen om te speelen
• Figures skating, possibly a caricature of Loutherbourg’s Winter, by Thomas Rowlandson
• Figures skating on a frozen pond by Thomas Rowlandson