Winter Landscape with a Woman and a Youth on a Small Bridge, Skaters and a Gallows in the Distance

c. 1620 - c. 1625

Object data

pen and brown ink, with watercolour, over traces of graphite or black chalk; framing line in black ink

height 152 mm × width 238 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso: lower left, in the hand of Ploos van Amstel, in graphite, H Avercam f / gebynaamd de / Stomme v Campen / h.6 d / b. 9 ½ (L. 3002) and 3004); below that, in pencil, fia; lower centre, in pencil, By Ploos 23 ½; below that, in pencil, 14
stamped on verso: centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: horn within a shield, surmounted by a crown, above 4; similar to Piccard VII, no. 234 (The Hague, 1615)

Condition

Light brown stains; thin spots; laid down

Provenance

…; ? sale, Gerard van Rossum (1699-1772, Rotterdam) and Pieter Boyer (?-?, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (De Winter and IJver), 8 February 1773 sqq., Album A, no. 66;¹ …; sale, Jan Lucas van der Dussen (1724-73, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (Slebes et al.), 31 October 1774 sqq., Album E, no. 313 (‘Hendrik van Avercamp. Een Wintergezicht; op een Brug, ter regter zyde, ziet men een Vrouw, staande, waarby een Man met een Kan in de eene, en een Byl in zyn andere hand houdende; verders in het verschiet een Galg, waarby eenige Schaatserydres. Zeer fraay met de Pen en Waterverf getekend’), fl. 35, to Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (1726-98), Amsterdam (L. 3002 and 3004);² his sale, Amsterdam (P. van der Schley et al.), 3 March 1800 sqq., Album H, no. 21 (‘Op een Brug staat een Man en Vrouw, met een Mandje met Vogelen; in 't verschiet eenige Schaatsenryders; natuurlyk, door M. [sic] van Averkamp’), fl. 23.10, to ‘Andriessen’;³ …; donated by Jonkvrouwe Agnes Henriette Beels van Heemstede-van Loon (1829-1902), Amsterdam, to the museum (L. 2228), 1898

Object number: RP-T-1898-A-3739

Credit line: Gift of A.H. Beels van Heemstede-van Loon

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 1585.⁴ 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’),⁵ 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’).⁶ Hendrick was buried on 15 May 1634 in the Bovenkerk (or St Nicolaaskerk) in Kampen.⁷

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

The double motif of a woman leaning on the bridge-rail with her right hand and a youth with an axe and a flagon are found in Avercamp’s monogrammed painting of a Winter Landscape, which is now in a private collection, having been formerly in the Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann (1923-2000) collection (inv. no. A-84) until it appeared on the London art market in 2002.⁸ Avercamp seems to have based the figures in the right foreground of the painting directly on this drawing.

Avercamp’s composition was copied by his follower and close imitator Arent Arentsz, called Cabel (1585/86-1631), in a painting preserved in the Harold Samuel Collection, Mansion House, London.⁹ Sutton’s theory that Cabel worked from the Rijksmuseum drawing and not from the ex-Dreesmann painting appears to be borne out by the fact that Cabel included such details as the dead ducks and the basket at the woman's feet, which do not feature in the painting.

That the Rijksmuseum drawing was derived from two separate figures studies is apparent from the fact that the two figures appear both separately and together in various paintings and drawings by Avercamp and his followers. For instance, the same two figures were adapted in a drawing in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (inv. no. WA1863.231),¹⁰ which – although it bears a false ‘HA’ monogram – is probably a copy after a lost drawing by Avercamp. In the Oxford sheet, executed entirely in black chalk, the man holding the axe is larger than his female counterpart, who is seen in the same pose as here, but leaning over and pushing a sledge with a barrel rather than holding onto the bridge hand-railing.

The motif of the man with an axe recurs by himself in the right foreground of a fully finished drawing by Avercamp, Frozen River with Skaters, in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (inv. no. O+007),¹¹ and he is also included in a Winter Scene in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 122).¹²

The present sheet – like both the Winter Landscape with Two Women and a Sledge and Other Figures on the Ice, a Gallows in the Distance (inv. no. RP-T-1899-A-4198) and Skaters on the Ice, a Man Pushing a Sledge and a Kolf-player (inv. no. RP-T-1891-A-2430) – can be dated to the first half of the 1620s.

Marijn Schapelhouman, 1998/Esther Verschueren and Jane Shoaf Turner, 2020

Literature

J.P. van der Kellen, Afbeeldingen naar belangrijke prenten en teekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam 1908, pl. XVIII; C.J. Welcker, Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634), bijgenaamd ‘De Stomme van Campen’ en Barent Avercamp (1612-1679). ‘Schilders tot Campen’, Zwolle 1933, no. T 3; Hollandsche teekenkunst in de Gouden Eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1935, no. 26; A.M. Meijerman, Hollandse winters, Hilversum 1967, repr. on p. 11; W. Schulz, Lambert Doomer: Sämtliche Zeichnungen, Berlin/New York 1974, p. 3, under no. 4; E. de Jongh et al., Tot lering en vermaak. Betekenissen van Hollandse genrevorstellingen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1976, no. 149; 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 3; S. Nihom-Nijstad, Reflets du siècle d’or: Tableaux hollandais du dix-septième siècle, exh. cat. Paris (Institut Néerlandais) 1983, p. 8, under no. 3; P. C. Sutton, Dutch & Flemish Seventeenth-century Paintings: The Harold Samuel Collection, Cambridge 1992, pp. 19-20, under no. 3 (fig. 3); 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. 10; P. Murray, Figure and Ground: Rembrandt to Mondriaan, exh. cat. Cork (Crawford Municipal Art Gallery), 2005, pp. 26, 30 (repr.); P. Roelofs et al., Hendrick Avercamp: Master of the Ice Scene, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art), 2009-10, pp. 113 (fig. 140), 114, 146 (fig. 181), 185

Citation

M. Schapelhouman, 1998/Esther Verschueren and Jane Shoaf Turner, 2020, 'Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Landscape with a Woman and a Youth on a Small Bridge, Skaters and a Gallows in the Distance, c. 1620 - c. 1625', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.27144

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