River Landscape with a Woman Carrying a Basket on her Head, Fishermen and Other Figures near the Walls of a Town

before c. 1620

Object data

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

height 130 mm × width 186 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed on verso: upper left, possibly in an eighteenth-century hand, in brown ink, nº 92; lower left, possibly in an eighteenth-century hand, in pencil, Hk Avercam / omtrent Aº 1620 / Stomme van Kampen; below that, in pencil, illegible; upper centre, in a nineteenth-century or later hand, in pencil, A; centre, in a eighteenth- or nineteenth-century hand, in brown ink, 1432 ; below that, in pencil, 6 and 15; upper right, in pencil, Blokhuysen nº 11
stamped on verso: centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228); lower right, with the mark of Pitcairn Knowles (L. 2643)

Technical notes

watermark: coat of arms, surmounted by a crown (unidentifiable fragment)

Condition

Light brown stains; thin spots at left and upper right

Provenance

…; sale, Dirk Vis Blokhuyzen (1799-1869, Rotterdam), Rotterdam (D.A. Lamme), 23 October 1871 sqq., no. 11 (‘Pêcheur an bord d'une rivière. A l'aquarelle’), fl. 14, to J.F. Ellinckhuysen (1814-97), Rotterdam;¹ his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller et al.), 19 November 1878 sqq., no. 8 (‘Paysage, animé de pécheurs. Au lointain la ville de Kampen. A l’aquarelle. - H. 14.5, L. 19. […]’), fl. 62, to Georg Carl Valentin Schöffer (1841-1915, Amsterdam and Scheveningen);² his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 30 May 1893 sqq., no. 6 (‘Rempart de ville, avec des pêcheurs. Aquarelle. - Hauteur 13, largeur 18.5 cent.’), fl. 31, to Wiliam Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94,) Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643);³ his sale, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 17 (‘Rempart de ville (Kampen) et paysage animé de pêcheurs et de paysans. Belle qualité, provenant des cabinets Vis Blokhuyzen, Ellinckhuyzen et Schöffer. Aquarelle. - H. 13, 1. 19 cent.’), fl. 20, to the dealer F. Muller, Amsterdam, for the Vereniging Rembrandt;⁴ from whom acquired by the museum (L. 2228), 1897

Object number: RP-T-1897-A-3399

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 1585.⁵ 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’),⁶ 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’).⁷ Hendrick was buried on 15 May 1634 in the Bovenkerk (or St Nicolaaskerk) in Kampen.⁸

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 inscription on the verso with the dating ‘omtrent 1620’ (‘circa 1620’) was probably written in the eighteenth century, so one would not be inclined to attach too much credence to it. In this case, however, it seems that the collector was not far out.

Few attempts have been made to arrange Avercamp’s drawn oeuvre chronologically. In the first place, the dated sheets are few and far between. One can sometimes give a drawing a rough date on the evidence of the costumes of the more fashionable figures, but that is not an option when the subjects are peasants, humbler members of society or fishermen. There is, however, a certain stylistic development that makes it possible to assign the drawings to broad categories. The early ones, made between about 1610 and 1615, have thin, fluid pen contours in brown ink, with the watercolour cautiously applied in a limited range of light colours: some yellow, brown, blue, green and pale red. In the late drawings, broadly speaking from the second half of the 1620s, the contours of the figures become heavier and emphatic and the colours more varied and bolder. Lying between these two extremes are many drawings that display features from both the ‘early’ and ‘late’ groups in varying proportions. One can attempt to rank this middle group in a necessarily rough chronological order by following the rule of thumb that the greater the number of features from the late category, the later the drawing.

If this theory has any validity, this particular drawing should be around 1620, or perhaps a little earlier. The colours are those of the early work, but the contours are already a little heavier and more continuous than those in the Return of the Duck Hunters (inv. no. RP-T-1919-30(R)).

It is not entirely certain that the scene is set just outside Kampen, as the old sale catalogues would have one believe. The town certainly had ramparts like the one in the left background, but the building a little further to the right is so sketchy that it is impossible to identify it as one of the church towers of Kampen.

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 17; 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 17, fig. XL, pl. XXI; T. Vignau-Wilberg, Das Land am Meer: Holländische Landschaft im 17. Jahrhundert, exh. cat. Munich (Staatliche Graphische Sammlung)/Bonn (Rheinisches Landesmuseum) 1993, p. 68, under no. 19, note I; 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. 7; P. Roelofs et al., Hendrick Avercamp: Master of the Ice Scene, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/Washington (DC) (National Gallery of Art), 2009-10, p. 176 (repr.)

Citation

M. Schapelhouman, 1998, 'Hendrick Avercamp, River Landscape with a Woman Carrying a Basket on her Head, Fishermen and Other Figures near the Walls of a Town, before c. 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.27159

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