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People who know Amsterdam are familiar with the "Kostverlorenkade". Huis Kostverloren once stood on this corner of the Amstel, nowadays only surviving in the form of numerous artworks. The wintry surroundings are an impressive example of the landscape paintings of the Dutch Golden Age.

Typical for paintings of the Beerstraaten family is the building, in this case Huis Kostverloren, as the central motif, the surrounding ice populated with a number of skaters, walkers and people otherwise enjoying themselves on the ice. A similar depiction of Huis Kostverloren, albeit from a different angle, can be found in the monograph by G. van der Most, where it is attributed to Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten. (G. van der Most, Jan Abrahamsz/Abraham/Anthonie Beerstraten. Kunstschilders uit de zeventiede eeuw, Nieuwkoop 2002, p. 40) The Beerstraaten family's oeuvre includes several buildings that no longer exist today, such as the old church in Nieuwkoop (Hamburger Kunsthalle, inv. no. HK-9), which is why the artworks are of such great historical interest. The reproductions of the buildings are reliable even in their details, but the winter landscapes also bear witness to the artistic creativity at play: the perspective is usually set particularly low, so that the buildings depicted sometimes appear much more impressive than they probably were, due to the foreshortening of the perspective. In addition, the frozen bodies of water depicted would not always have been found in the immediate vicinity of the buildings, but the ice is ultimately essential for a winter scene.

To this day, art historians are unclear about the verifiability of the total of five assumed landscape painters with the name Beerstraaten – as well as the attribution of the individual artworks to Johannis, Jan Abrahamsz, Abraham, Johannes and Anthonie. The family of painters was active in Amsterdam in the mid-17th century. The RKD currently lists Jan and Johannis as one and the same person, and Abraham Beerstraaten, who specialised in winter landscapes, is considered to be his eldest son. The existence of Anthonie Beerstraaten (probably his brother) as a painter has also not yet been convincingly proven by archival documents, which is why Ellis Dullaart considers both artists as possible creators of the present painting.