Landscape with Houses and Two Windmills along a Road, with Three Fishermen in the Foreground

before 1620

Object data

pen and grey ink, with watercolour, over traces of graphite; framing lines in graphite and brown-grey ink

height 225 mm × width 320 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso, in pencil: upper left, 299; lower right, 231 / 317
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: Arms of Württemberg; similar to Heawood, no. 484 (Schieland, 1604)

Condition

Various thin spots and a few large, brown stains; a vertical crease in the centre

Provenance

… ; collection Gerard ter Borch I (1582/83-1661), Zwolle; by descent to Lambertus Theodorus Zebinden (1809-86), Zwolle;¹ sale, Gerard ter Borch I (1582/83-1661, Zwolle) et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 15 June 1886 sqq., no. 309, with 616 other drawings and 153 prints, to the Vereniging Rembrandt;² from whom, en bloc, fl. 3522.50, to the museum (L. 2228), 1887

Object number: RP-T-1887-A-1242

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

The artist

Hendrick Avercamp (Amsterdam 1585 – Kampen 1634)

The eldest son of the apothecary Barent Hendricksz Avercamp (1557-1602) and Beatrix Peters Vekemans (c. 1563-1633), he was baptized in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 27 January 1585.³ In 1586 his father became the town apothecary of Kampen, and the family moved there. Hendrick has long been assumed to have been deaf and mute from birth, since he was commonly known as ‘de Stom’ or ‘de Stomme’ (‘the Mute’). Because one of the buyers at the 1607 studio sale of Pieter Isaacsz (1568-1625) in Amsterdam is mentioned as ‘de stom tot Pieter Isacqs’ (‘the mute at Pieter Isaacz’s’),⁴ it is thought that Avercamp was sent to Amsterdam to live and study with the history and portrait painter Pieter Isaacsz, who returned to his native Denmark in that year. By January 1613, but probably earlier, Avercamp must have returned to Kampen, where he remained for the rest of his life. Shortly before his mother died, she expressed in her will her concern about her unmarried eldest son, Hendrick, who she called ‘stom en miserable’ (‘mute and wretched’).⁵ Hendrick was buried on 15 May 1634 in the Bovenkerk (or St Nicolaaskerk) in Kampen.⁶

Avercamp painted and drew mainly winter scenes, which in the seventeenth century were called ‘wintertjes’. His early paintings, executed in 1608 and 1609, show the influence of Flemish landscape painters, such as Hans Bol (1534-1593), Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1607) and David Vinckboons I (1576-1631/33), and a strong interest in narrative details in the tradition of Pieter Bruegel I (c. 1528-1569). The Flemish influence became less noticeable in his later works, with the horizon lines being lower and the perspective more natural. Although best known for his winter landscape paintings, he also drew and painted some summer and river landscapes.

Hendrick Avercamp was a prolific draughtsman, who worked mostly in pen, chalk and watercolour, creating figure studies that were recycled repeatedly in his paintings, as well as fully worked-out drawings as detailed as his paintings. The latter works were probably intended for sale. Paintings by artists such as Arent Arentsz (1585/86-1631), Adam van Breen (c. 1585-after 1642), Antonie Verstralen (c. 1594-1641) and Hendrick’s nephew Barent Avercamp (1612/13-1679) strongly resemble his work, but it is unclear whether those artists were taught by him or simply imitated his work.

Jan-Piet Filedt Kok, 2007

REFERENCES
E. Bénézit, ‘Hendrick Avercamp’, in U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, II (1908), pp. 276-77; C.J. Welcker, Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634), bijgenaamd ‘De Stomme van Campen’ en Barent Avercamp (1612-1679). ‘Schilders tot Campen’, Zwolle 1933, pp. 33-71; C.J. Welcker and D.J. Hensbroek-van der Poel, Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634), bijgenaamd ‘De Stomme van Campen’ en Barent Avercamp (1612-1679). ‘Schilders tot Campen’, Doornspijk 1979, pp. 33-71; A. Blankert, Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634), Barent Avercamp (1612-1679): Frozen Silence: Paintings from Museums and Private Collections, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Waterman Gallery)/Zwolle (Provinciehuis Overijssel) 1982-83, pp. 15-36; D.J. Hensbroek-van der Poel, ‘Hendrick Avercamp’, in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, 94 vols., Munich 1992-, V (1992), pp. 728-29; D.J. Hensbroek-van der Poel, ‘Avercamp Family’, in J. Turner (ed.), The Dictionary of Art, 34 vols., London/New York 1996, II, pp. 854-55; J. Bikker, ‘Hendrick Avercamp: “The Mute of Kampen”, in P. Roelofs et al., Hendrick Avercamp: Master of the Ice Scene, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art) 2009-10, pp. 11-21

Entry

Avercamp was so dissatisfied with this drawing that he abandoned it midway. There is a slightly smaller, finished version in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. O+ 001).⁷ Among other differences, it lacks the three fishermen and their boat that is such a prominent feature of the foreground of the Rijksmuseum sheet. The stretch of flood plain by the bend in the river is being used as a bleaching field in the Amsterdam drawing, but in the Haarlem version the linen is missing. The village or small town in the left background, which has just a single church and a mill in the Amsterdam sheet, was transformed into quite a sizable town with three churches. This shows that even if Avercamp based his initial version on an observed reality, he was ultimately not too concerned about topographical accuracy.⁸

With its thin, unemphatic pen lines and light colours, this drawing is stylistically of a piece with the View of a Country House with Sowers in the Field (inv. no. RP-T-1879-A-21), datable circa 1610-15, and the Return of the Duck Hunters (inv. no. RP-T-1919-30(R)), which is drawn on paper with the same watermark. It should thus also perhaps be dated well before 1620.

Marijn Schapelhouman, 1998

Literature

C.J. Welcker, Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634), bijgenaamd ‘De Stomme van Campen’ en Barent Avercamp (1612-1679). ‘Schilders tot Campen’, Zwolle 1933, no. T 21; K.G. Boon and L.C.J. Frerichs, Hollandse tekeningen uit de Gouden Eeuw. Keuze uit openbare en particuliere Nederlandse verzamelingen, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I)/Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Hamburg (Hamburger Kunsthalle) 1961, p. 13, under no. 12; K.G. Boon, Holländische Zeichnungen der Rembrandt-Zeit, ausgewählt aus öffentlichen und privaten Sammlungen in den Niederlanden, exh. cat. Hamburg (Hamburger Kunsthalle) 1961, p. 13, under no. 12; C.J. Welcker and D.J. Hensbroek-van der Poel, Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634), bijgenaamd ‘De Stomme van Campen’ en Barent Avercamp (1612-1679). ‘Schilders tot Campen’, Doornspijk 1979, no. T 21; A. McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols., coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1988, II, p. 772, no. I; F.J. Duparc, Landscape in Perspective: Drawings by Rembrandt and his Contemporaries, exh. cat. Cambridge (MA) (Arthur M. Sackler Museum)/Montreal (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts) 1988, p. 57, under no. 4; G. Luijten and A. van Suchtelen (eds.), Dawn of the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish Art, 1580-1620, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1993-94, no. 309; M.C. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, II: Artists Born between 1575 and 1630, coll. cat. Haarlem 1997, p. 46, under no. 13; M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Artists Born between 1580 and 1600, 2 vols., coll. cat. Amsterdam 1998, no. 4; P. Roelofs et al., Hendrick Avercamp: Master of the Ice Scene, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art), 2009-10, pp. 119-20 (fig. 147)

Citation

M. Schapelhouman, 1998, 'Hendrick Avercamp, Landscape with Houses and Two Windmills along a Road, with Three Fishermen in the Foreground, before 1620 - 1620', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.27157

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