Object data
oil on panel
support: height 47 cm × width 86.8 cm
outer size: depth 7 cm (support incl. frame)
Hendrick Avercamp (copy after)
Frolicking on a Frozen Canal in a Town
c. 1615 - c. 1620
Technical notes
The support is an oak panel consisting of two horizontally grained planks that has been thinned and cradled. There are bevels on the left and right sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1593. The panel could have been ready for use by 1604, but a date in or after 1610 is more likely. The off-white ground layer was applied thinly and smoothly, the paint transparently and with bold brushstrokes in the sky and in the buildings, and opaquely and smoothly in the figures. The outlines of the figures, most of which were reserved in the paint layer, were sketched with the brush. No reserves were made for the figures in the background. The position of the wings of the mill in the background was altered, and a chimney behind the houses on the left was removed.
Scientific examination and reports
- dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 27 October 1995
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 29 November 2004
Condition
Fair. The trees, the sky and the dark passages in the sky are abraded, with pinpoint losses throughout. There is discoloured retouching along the panel join and along a 20 cm crack at the lower right. The cradle is blocked. The varnish has yellowed slightly.
Conservation
- L. Kuiper, 1985: overpainting of the seated figure on the left and in the sky removed; revarnished
Provenance
…; from Mr Cordeil, Paris, fl. 1,600, as Willem Pietersz Buytewech, to the museum, April 18841
Object number: SK-A-802
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Hendrick Avercamp (Amsterdam 1585 - Kampen 1634)
The eldest son of the apothecary Barent Hendricksz Avercamp and Beatrix Peters Vekemans, Hendrick Avercamp was baptized in the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 25 January 1585. In 1586 his father became the town apothecary of Kampen, and the family moved there. As Hendrick was deaf and dumb from birth, he was commonly known as ‘de Stom’ or ‘de Stomme’ (‘the mute’). Since one of the buyers at the studio sale of Pieter Isaacsz in Amsterdam in 1607 is mentioned as ‘de stom tot Pieter Isacqs’ (‘the mute at Pieter Isaacsz’s’), it is thought that Avercamp was sent to Amsterdam to live and study with the history and portrait painter Pieter Isaacsz (1569-1625), 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 miserabel’ (‘mute and miserable’). Hendrick was buried on 15 May 1634 in the Bovenkerk (or St Nicolaaskerk) in Kampen.
Avercamp mainly painted winter scenes, called ‘wintertjes’ in the 17th century. His early paintings, dated 1608 and 1609, show the influence of Flemish landscape painters like Hans Bol, Gillis van Coninxloo and David Vinckboons, and a strong interest in narrative details in the tradition of Pieter Brueghel. The Flemish influence becomes 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 several and painted a few summer and river landscapes. Hendrick Avercamp was a prolific draughtsman, mostly in pen, chalk and watercolour, creating figure studies for his paintings and fully worked-out drawings as detailed as his paintings. The latter drawings 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 (1612/13-79) 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
Benezit in Thieme/Becker II, 1908, pp. 276-77; Welcker 1933, pp. 33-71; Blankert in Amsterdam-Zwolle 1982, pp. 15-36; Hensbroek in Saur V, 1992, pp. 728-29; Hensbroek in Turner 1996, II, pp. 854-55
Entry
This unsigned ice scene was purchased by the museum in 1884 as a work by Willem Pietersz Buytewech. Three years later, Bredius assigned it to Esaias van de Velde in the museum’s catalogue.2 In 1984, Keyes associated it with a monogrammed ice scene by Hendrick Avercamp (fig. a).3 This composition with skaters and kolf players shows exactly the same location, the northern perimeter canal outside Haarlem, near the St Janspoort city gate, with the Kruispoort in the background and the Pink mill behind it.4 Although the figures in Avercamp’s original are fewer and smaller, the correspondences in the staffage are unmistakable. Striking details found in both paintings include the woman looking out at the viewer on the right who is having her skates tied on by the kneeling man, the icebound boat in the foreground, and the seated figure attending to a call of nature.5
Although the figures betray a practized hand, it is not clear who painted this scene. The style is different from Hendrick Avercamp’s. The attribution to Esaias van de Velde, on which Van Gelder had cast doubt back in 1955, is no longer tenable.6 Keyes was the first to propose the name of Jan van de Velde II.7 Van Thiel8 and Van Suchtelen9 adopted that attribution. Among other things, Van Suchtelen saw similarities in the fanciful pattern of highlights that is also found in the monogrammed oval winter landscape in the Rijksmuseum that is attributed to Jan van de Velde II (SK-A-3241).10
However, the basis for an attribution to the graphic artist Jan van de Velde is wafer thin. There is no clear overview of his painted oeuvre,11 and the differences between the small winter scene monogrammed I.V.V. in the Rijksmuseum and the present painting are greater than the similarities. This large work is considerably more detailed and was more meticulously executed, and the slick figures in opaque paint, most of which were reserved in the background, hardly bear comparison with the rapidly painted staffage of the small winter scene. The palette is also much more colourful.
The most sensible course for the time being is to regard the Rijksmuseum’s variant as a copy after Hendrick Avercamp. It would have been painted not long after the original, and can be placed in the second half of the 1610s.12
Gerdien Wuestman, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 13.
Literature
Bengtsson 1952, pp. 26, 58, note 47; Van Gelder 1955, p. 34; Keyes 1984, p. 199, no. rej. 34; Van Suchtelen in The Hague 2001, p. 165, note 6
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 174, no. 1492 (as Esaias van de Velde); 1903, p. 274, no. 2454 (as attributed to Esaias van de Velde); 1934, p. 289, no. 2454 (as attributed to Esaias van de Velde); 1960, p. 314, no. 2454 (as attributed to Esaias van de Velde); 1976, p. 559, no. A 802 (as Esaias van de Velde); 1992, pp. 88-89, no. A 802 (as Jan van de Velde II); 2007, no. 13
Citation
G. Wuestman, 2007, 'copy after Hendrick Avercamp, Frolicking on a Frozen Canal in a Town, c. 1615 - c. 1620', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6358
(accessed 22 November 2024 19:48:12).