Lot 50: Circle of Hendrick Avercamp (Amsterdam 1585-1634 Kampen)

Circle of Hendrick Avercamp (Amsterdam 1585-1634 Kampen) A winter landscape with townsfolk skating on a frozen moat oil on panel 50.5 x 90.5 cm.

50.5 x 90.5 cm.

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 18 April 1980, lot 23, as S. Vrancx. Anonymous sale; Christie's, Amsterdam, 6 May 1993, lot 71, as Denis van Alsloot, where acquired by the late Mr. and Mrs. Smidt van Gelder-baroness van Zuijlen van Nijevelt.

This scene would have been a familiar sight in The Netherlands during the winters in the seventeenth century, a period that fell in the middle of what is commonly known as the Little Ice Age. Under a pale winter sky, flooded pasturelands outside the city walls are covered with ice, providing a stage for lively activity. The ice is dotted with people and many of them, mainly couples, have formed a line that begins in the immediate foreground and extends into the hazy distance, both an amusing motif and a clever accent balancing the composition. As a subject, winter landscapes originate in mid-sixteenth-century Flanders, with Pieter Breughel the Elder as its founding father. The early-seventeenth-century winter scenes by Hans Bol, Gillis van Coninxloo and David Vinckboons, Flemish masters who had settled in Amsterdam, paved the way for the great flourishing of the winter landscape in the Dutch Golden Age, culminating in the works of the celebrated Hendrick Avercamp in the first decades of the century and those by Aert van der Neer in the 1650s and later. Interestingly, this imposing panoramic view includes Flemish and Dutch features alike; southern are the broadly treated figures reminiscent of Sebastiaen Vrancx and the stylized treetops in the distance, which are close to those of Joos de Momper. Northern and specifically inspired by Avercamp’s works of the early ca. 1615-20 is the simple yet effective spatial design - a date corroborated by the fashion of the figures. The anonymous author of this work could very well be a young Dutch artist working in Amsterdam, who was exposed to examples of Flemish ice scenes, for example by the aforementioned Vinckboons, who was active in the city from 1591 onwards. There are also faint echoes with contemporary works by masters such as Adam van Breen and Esaias van de Velde. Our painting thus stems from a crucial stage in the development of the genre, when Avercamp and the other pioneers introduced important innovations that can also be admired here, notably an acute sense of observation resulting in a sensitive portrayal of the frosty atmosphere, subtle monochromic palette and attention for realistic detail. An almost identical composition was in 1862 in the collection of Sir Bryan Lawrence, Old Friar, Hampshire, later to be auctioned by Galerie Fischer, Luzern, 12-16 June 1956, lot 1829 and by Galerie Trussart, Brussels, 20 May 1957, lot 90, respectively as Barent Avercamp and Hendrick Avercamp.