Lot 528: Hendrick Avercamp (Amsterdam 1585-1634 Kampen)

A winter landscape with elegant company skating on a frozen waterway signed with monogram 'HA' (lower right) oil on panel 113/4 x 17 5/8 in. (30 x 44.7 cm.) PROVENANCE With Edward Speelman, London, 1966. With Robert Noortman, Maastricht, 1996, acquired by Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann (inventory no. A-84). LITERATURE C.J. Welcker, Hendrik Avercamp 1585-1634 bijgenaamd "De Stomme van Campen" en Barent Avercamp 1612-1679 "Schilders tot Campen", 1933, 2nd edn., D.B. Hensbroek-Van der Poel, ed., Doornspijk, 1979, p. 214, no. S57.7. Catalogue of the exhibition, Dutch and Flemish Seventeenth-Century Paintings: The Harold Samuel Collection, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, under no. 1, fig. 1. EXHIBITION Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum, Nederlandse Landschappen uit de zeventiuende eeuw, July-August 1963, no. 5, p. 19, pl. 44. San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Toledo, Museum of Art, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, The Age of Rembrandt, 1966-7, no. 43, illustrated. NOTES This winter landscape is an important work by Hendrick Avercamp, the first north Netherlandish artist to specialize in winter landscapes. Born in Amsterdam, Avercamp's family moved to Kampen in 1586, where he was to reside for most of the remainder of his life. His only known time away from there was when he was apprenticed until 1607 with the Amsterdam-based artist Pieter Isaacksz.; there, Avercamp was able to absorb the works of earlier landscapists, probably through the medium of engravings. Particularly influential were the painters Hans Bol and David Vinckboons, elements of compositions by whom he repeated in early works, and who therefore linked him to the Flemish tradition established by Pieter Bruegel I. Since few of Avercamp's paintings are dated, his oeuvre is hard to place convincingly in order; there are, however, dated paintings for the years 1605, 1608, 1609, 1626 and 1632, which indicate certain stylistic developments in his work. His early pictures tend to adopt the high viewpoint and horizon of the Flemish landscape tradition, for example that in the Billedgalleri, Bergen, with buildings and trees providing structured coulisses within which his figures are arranged. Later in his career, Avercamp came to lower his viewpoint and horizon, whilst opening up his backgrounds; at the same time, the figures in his compositions tend to be placed much nearer to the foreground, and in a larger scale. The present work is a fine example of this later style, and can be dated to circa 1620-5. Avercamp was unusual in being born deaf-mute - contemporary sources from as early as 1613 describe him as De Stomme van Campen. This disability has often been used to explain the idiosyncracy of the world he depicted. His figures, described with great care and full of anecdotal detail, seem to remain in isolation from each other, observed but not heard; even when apparently conversing, there appears to be a distance between them, and only very rarely do they interact with the viewer, looking out of the picture plane. Once Avercamp had determined the details of a particular figure, or group of figures, they tended to enter his repertory and can be repeated in both his paintings and drawings. All the main characters who feature in the foreground of the present work can be found in other pictures by the artist. There is a drawing in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (fig. a), from which the two figures in the right foreground are taken, identically attired and similarly positioned standing on a landing stage. Similarly the man standing on the end of the stage, in a fur-lined hat, can be found in at least four other works, including that in the painting recorded by Welcker ( op. cit., no. S33.1, pl. IX) as in the collection of Baron van Wijnbergen, in the company of the elegant couple skating towards the viewer as well as the boy beside them skating away with a bottle hanging by his waist. Particularly interesting in the present case is the use of elements of the composition in subsequent works by Barent Avercamp, Hendrick's nephew, and Arent Arentsz., called Cabel (for whom. see lot 529). Thus in the Winter landscape by the former in the Rijksmuseum Kr”ller-Mller can be found the man standing at the end of the stage, the couple in the centre foreground and the girl between those three figures. Arentsz., possibly using the Amsterdam drawing as his model, employed the two figures on the right in his Winter landscape with figures on a bridge, a hunter and skaters in the Guildhall, London (Harold Samuel collection).