A winter scene with skaters on a frozen river, a village beyond

Hendrick Avercamp was the first north Netherlandish artist to specialize in winter landscapes. Born in Amsterdam, Avercamp's family moved in 1586 to Kampen, a small harbor town on the eastern shore of the Zuiderzee, that was to provide the setting for virtually all of his artistic output. In or around 1607, the young artist returned to Amsterdam to train, probably under the portraitist and history painter Pieter Isaacsz. (1568/9-1625). However, Avercamp's main formative influence was the Flemish landscape tradition and he must have become familiar in these early years with the imagery of Hans Bol, Pieter Brueghel and David Vinckboons. Little is known about Avercamp’s life in Kampen or his working practice, but much is made of the fact that he was non-verbal and possibly also deaf (he was known as 'de stomme van Kampen') and thus, by inference, that he was blessed with a heightened sensitivity to the visual world.

This is a rare dated painting by Avercamp which has provided an important reference point in trying to establish a chronology for the artist. The only other dated works by him are from the years 1605, 1608, 1626 and 1632. Painted shortly after he had served his apprenticeship in Amsterdam, the work marks something of a departure from his earlier style with the reduction in the number of figures, the adoption of a more naturalistic atmosphere with less color accent, and a slightly lowered viewpoint and horizon line.

This was no doubt a period of experimentation for the artist. As Pieter Roelofs has remarked in discussing the present work ‘he [Avercamp] employed progressive and traditional trends side by side and switched back and forth from one to the other as he saw fit’ (loc. cit., p. 44). This is certainly borne out by the Infra-Red image which is revealing about the painting process (fig. 2). Most noticeable is Avercamp’s use of broadly drawn perspective lines stemming from a central vanishing point on the horizon. Rough under-drawing can also be seen in the architecture, which, as has been observed in the picture of circa 1608-09 in Schwerin (fig. 1, inv. no. G60), give an indication of the buildings but appear to have no real function for the shape in the final painting (see A. Wallert and I. Verslype, ibid., pp. 130-131).

In the center of the composition, on the horizon line, the under-drawing indicates a design for a swing bridge, similar to the one in the Mauritshuis painting, dated circa 1610 (inv. no. 785, on long term loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Both works reveal a heightened interest in the distant landscape and the evocation of depth in the picture space. At the same time, the contemporary manner in which Avercamp depicted, farmhouses, barns, mills and bridges lend a distinctly Dutch flavor to the scenes - ‘important factors in Avercamp’s invention of a specific Northern Netherlandish variant of the winter landscape’ (P. Roelofs, op. cit., p. 44).