Winter Landscape with Two Women and a Sledge and Other Figures on the Ice, a Gallows in the Distance

c. 1620 - c. 1625

Object data

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

height 129 mm × width 177 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso: upper left, possibly in an eighteenth-century hand, in graphite, de Stomme van Campen; lower left, possibly in an eighteenth-century hand, in graphite, Avercam A.1620; centre, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, Het Y by Winter / op het 2de plan de Volewyk; below that, in pencil, 21
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: none

Condition

Brown stains, thin spots along the edges

Provenance

… ; sale, Everard de Burlett I (1731-1806, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (Ph. van der Schley et al.), 13 April 1807 sqq., Album B, no. 10 (‘De Vogelwijk te Amsterdam, met ditto, door de stomme van Kampen’), fl. 3.10, to the dealer M. Wolff, Amsterdam;¹ …; collection Carel Lambert Wurfbain (1837-1903), Amsterdam;² his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 20 November 1899 sqq., no. 200 (‘Het Y bij winter; landlieden brengen hunne waren per slêe naar Amsterdam. Op ’t tweede plan, de Volewijk. Fraaie teekening in kleuren door H. Averkamp, omstreeks 1625. Hoog 13, breed 18 cent.’), fl. 98, to the dealer H.J. Valk, Amsterdam, for the museum (L. 2228), 1899

Object number: RP-T-1899-A-4198

Credit line: Purchase

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

The old tradition – that the structure in the background is the Volewijk gallows near Amsterdam – is probably incorrect, for that gibbet was decorated with statuary, as can be seen in a drawing by Anthonie van Borssom (1630/31-1677) in the Rijksmuseum (inv. no. RP-T-1954-182).⁷ There is not a trace of any kind of decoration in Avercamp’s drawing. Gallows feature regularly in his winter scenes, invariably in different surroundings. In most cases, the artist probably had no intention of depicting a topographically recognizable location.

When looking at a wintry scene with skaters, the seventeenth-century viewer would have been reminded time and again of the saying ‘de slibberachtigheyt van ’s menschen leven’ (‘the slipperiness of human life’).⁸ Sutton suggested that the addition of the gallows motif gave an extra dimension to this metaphor of the uncertainty of man’s existence – a sort of grim memento mori.⁹

The colours are brighter and more variegated than in the River Landscape with a Woman Carrying a Basket on her Head, Fishermen and Other Figures near the Walls of a Town (inv. no. RP-T-1897-A-3399), and the contours are a little heavier and more pronounced. The drawing should therefore be dated a little later, thus in the early 1620s.

Marijn Schapelhouman, 1998

Literature

J.P. van der Kellen, Afbeeldingen naar belangrijke prenten en teekeningen in het Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam 1908, pl. XVIII; Hollandsche winters. Teekeningen uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksprentenkabinet) 1917, no. 10 (?, as Terugkeer van de markt ); 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; A.M. Meijerman, Hollandse winters, Hilversum 1967, p. 11 (repr.); W. Schulz, Lambert Doomer: Sämtliche Zeichnungen, Berlin/New York 1974, p. 3, under no. 4; 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 (under no. 3), 20 (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. 8; P. Roelofs et al., Hendrick Avercamp: Master of the Ice Scene, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art), 2009-10, pp. 144 (fig. 175), 176

Citation

M. Schapelhouman, 1998, 'Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Landscape with Two Women and a Sledge and Other Figures on the Ice, 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.27149

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