Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters
Hendrick Avercamp (1585 to 1634) · About 1608
A frozen river, a village, a low grey sky and hundreds of people. Skaters glide, fall and hold hands; men play kolf, an ancestor of golf, with curved clubs; a horse drawn sleigh crosses the ice, fishermen cut holes, a couple embraces, a man relieves himself against a wall, and in the distance the crowd thins to dots on the white. Every figure has something to do, and part of the pleasure of the painting is the time it takes to find them all. It was painted around 1608, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, when Dutch winters were long enough for the whole country to take to the ice.
Hendrick Avercamp was born deaf and mute and spent most of his life in the small town of Kampen, and his eye for the small comedy of ordinary people is unmatched. The picture is built like a stage: the high viewpoint tips the ice towards us, the buildings on either side frame the scene, and the sky, which takes up half the panel, is a delicate wash of pink and grey. Look at the details he could not resist: a bird trap on the left, a man skating with a woman on his back, a dog worrying a carcass, a boat frozen into the ice and a coat of arms on the brewery. Everything is painted with a tiny brush and a huge patience.
Winter scenes like this became a Dutch speciality, but Avercamp's are the earliest and the most crowded with life. The panel was bought by the Rijksmuseum in 1898. It is a portrait of a society enjoying itself in the open air, rich and poor together, at a moment when the young Republic was beginning to feel secure, and it is still the picture people think of when they imagine a Dutch winter.
Did You Know? Avercamp was known in his own time as the mute of Kampen, and his skating scenes are the earliest Dutch winter landscapes of their kind.
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