View of a Country House with Sowers in the Field

c. 1610 - c. 1615

Object data

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

height 131 mm × width 191 mm

Inscriptions

monogrammed: lower centre (on wall), in brown ink, HA (in ligature)
inscribed on verso: lower left, in a nineteenth-century hand, in pencil, H.v.Avercamp; lower centre, in an eighteenth-century hand, in graphite, 20; lower right, in pencil, VI
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2166)

Technical notes

watermark: basilisk with a shield containing a crozier, above a cross and three interconnected triangles; similar to Heawood, no. 838 (1609)

Condition

Light brown stains

Provenance

…; sale, Dionis Muilman (1702-72, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (J. de Bosch Jzn et al.), 29 March 1773 sqq., Album D, no. 251 (‘Een Landschap met een Heerenhuis, waar voor men bezig is te Zaaijen […]. Hoog 5 ½, breed 7 ½ duim [14 x 19.1 cm]’), with no. 250, fl. 70, to ‘Fouquet’;¹ …; sale, Frederik Carel Theodoor, Baron van Isendoorn à Blois, Heer van Feluy and De Cannenburch (1784-1865, Kasteel De Cannenburch, Vaassen), Amsterdam (C.F. Roos et al.), 18 December 1879, no. 4 (‘H. van Avercamp. Paysage avec un château et figures. Au bistre’), fl. 29, to the museum (L. 2166

Object number: RP-T-1879-A-21

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 1585.² 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’),³ 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’).⁴ Hendrick was buried on 15 May 1634 in the Bovenkerk (or St Nicolaaskerk) in Kampen.⁵

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 medieval-looking building consisting of two abutting wings with saddleback roofs may well have been a real-life manorial farmhouse in the provinces of Overijssel or Friesland. A peasant is sowing seed in the left foreground, and one wonders whether this is the April sheet from a series of the Twelve Months of the Year.

The high vantage-point, meticulous style of drawing with very delicate pen lines, and the subdued shades of carefully applied watercolour are all characteristic of Avercamp’s early drawings. Precisely how early is difficult to say, given the scarcity of dated works. His earliest drawing is usually considered to be the Landscape with a Ruined Tower in the Frits Lugt Collection, Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. no. 4953), which is inscribed on the reverse: Hendrick Avercamp heeft mij dit gelewert / den 28 January 1613 in Campen (‘Hendrick Avercamp delivered this to me on 28 January 1613 in Kampen’).⁶ Blankert, however, pointed out that this does not necessarily mean that the drawing was made in 1613, merely that the owner acquired it that year. He believes that it should be dated somewhat earlier, around 1609.⁷

The Rijksmuseum drawing is particularly close to a Village Street with a Castle on the Left, also in the Fondation Custodia (inv. no. 5183), which Van Hasselt dated 1615-20.⁸ That dating, though, seems to be based on the assumption that the ‘1613’ on the first Paris drawing is indeed the date of execution. If Blankert is right, one might have to conclude that the second Paris sheet, and consequently the Amsterdam landscape as well, should be dated a few years earlier, perhaps around 1610-15.

Marijn Schapelhouman, 1998

Literature

J. Nanninga Uitterdijk, ‘Een en ander over Hendrick Avercamp, den Stomme van Kampen, en zijne werken’, in F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis, 7 vols., Rotterdam 1877-90, II (1880), p. 224; C.J. Welcker, Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634), bijgenaamd ‘De Stomme van Campen’ en Barent Avercamp (1612-1679). ‘Schilders tot Campen’, Zwolle 1933, no. T 10; J.Q. van Regteren Altena, Holländische Meisterzeichnungen des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, Basel 1948, no. 9; M.F. Hennus, ‘Hendrik Avercamp als tekenaar’, Maandblad voor Beeldende Kunsten 25 (1949), no. 2 pp. 1-10 (esp. p. 2, repr.); J. Bruyn et al., Le Paysage hollandais au XVIIe siècle, exh. cat. Paris (Orangerie des Tuileries) 1950-51, no. 104; 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 10; 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. 2; P. Murray, Figure and Ground: Rembrandt to Mondriaan, exh. cat. Cork (Crawford Municipal Art Gallery), 2005, pp. 26-27 (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. 91, 93 (fig. 116)

Citation

M. Schapelhouman, 1998, 'Hendrick Avercamp, View of a Country House with Sowers in the Field, c. 1610 - c. 1615', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.27153

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