There is something irresistible about a harsh winter. Everything seems to be still, but the ice buzzes with life. In Winter Landscape with Skaters, Hendrick Avercamp captures this perfectly. From a high vantage point, he painted a world full of skating people and playing children. It is a painting you can hear, even though it makes no sound and the painter himself was deaf.
Hendrick Avercamp was born in Amsterdam in 1585 but grew up in Kampen. He was deaf and spoke hardly at all. Avercamp quickly earned the nickname the Mute of Kampen. His father was a pharmacist, and his mother taught him to write. Writing was possible for him, but drawing suited him much better. Through his drawings, he found a way to express his feelings.
Learning the craft of painting
In Kampen, he learned the basics of painting from a local, poor artist. Perhaps precisely because he could not hear, he observed even more carefully. His deafness shaped his worldview and art. Avercamps mentor died during a plague, as did his father and brother. Therefore, at the age of 18, he moved to Amsterdam to live with his uncle. Back in the big city, he worked under Pieter Isaacsz, a Danish history painter and portraitist, who further took Avercamp under his wing.
Fondness for ice scenes
In Amsterdam, the young Avercamp also came into contact with the work of Southern Netherlandish landscape painters such as Gillis van Coninxloo and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bruegel is especially known as the most complete landscape painter of that time. His work was extremely detailed. For example, he painted blind people so precisely that ophthalmologists could recognize various eye diseases they suffered from. These painters influenced Avercamp, and gradually he developed a fondness for winter landscapes and ice scenes. He became the first Northern Netherlandish artist to specialize fully in this genre.
Clear intimacy
What makes his work so special is the combination of overview and intimacy. In Winter Landscape with Skaters, the viewer looks down from a high vantage point onto a frozen river. Hundreds of people are on the ice. Some are there purely for their pleasure: gliding, sliding, playing. Children run over the ice, challenge each other, fall and get up again. Men and women try to trade or perform daily work.
Lively atmosphere report
Some carry water, others transport wood. Here and there, a mischievous skater can be seen trying to push another over. Every detail contributes to the feeling that you are looking at a lively report of the 17th-century winter. Almost as if you can hear the cries of joy and the scraping of skates. Even though Avercamp himself never heard it.
Realism
But Avercamp does not only show the cheerful life on the ice. On the left foreground, we see crows and a small dog eating the carcass of a frozen dead horse. Winter brings not only beauty and amusement but also danger and death. His work is a realistic image of a society that is both playful and harsh.
Great precision
The painting also shows how winter organized social life. The river was a public space, a place where rich and poor, young and old came together. While some people use the ice for work or trade, others move purely for their pleasure. Avercamp observes with great precision. You see a man sharpening his skates, a group playing a game, and behind them a woman carrying water on the ice. There is no hierarchy, no artificial order. Everything is mixed, as it must have been in reality on a frozen river.
Always new stories
His deafness seems to have been a gift in Avercamps work. He did not need to hear the world to record it accurately. An entire society captured in a single image. And yet it is intimate. You can get lost in the crowd, discover new stories each time, small human tragedies and comic moments.
Enchantment
With his sharp eyes and sense of detail, Avercamp painted a world that still enchants 4 centuries later. A painting you can hear despite his deafness, even though it makes no sound. Avercamp died in 1634 at the age of 49.
The Collection
The collection of the Rijksmuseum consists of more than a million artworks, publications, and visitor stories. You can admire the collection not only in the museum but also online. In the section The Collection, we pick an Amsterdam painting, print, or drawing from the Rijksmuseum collection each time and provide context. This time Winter Landscape with Skaters by Hendrick Avercamp.
Image: Rijksmuseum
