Mounted on horseback, skates, and sledges, busily sporting and tending to wares, men and women from all walks of life slip-slide over frozen waters in the 1624 drawing Skaters, Colf Players, and Sleighs on a Frozen River with a Ship at Right and a Dike at Left by Dutch artist Hendrick Avercamp.
During the era known as the Little Ice Age, unusually cold temperatures turned the Dutch Republic’s commercial waterways into chaotic open-air theaters of leisure and labor alike. A specialist in such winter landscapes, Avercamp sensitively captured a vast range of activities and behaviors bared against white ice and snow. Avercamp and his unique storytelling is featured in the Getty Center exhibition On Thin Ice: Dutch Depictions of Extreme Weather.
Past commentators have sought to attribute Avercamp’s impressive command of minute detail and observational skill to one particular facet of his life. Known as “the mute of Kampen” (de Stom van Kampen), Avercamp was non-verbal and most likely also prelingually deaf (a person who does not develop speech because they grew up without the ability to hear). Some have speculated that he could have led an isolated and lonely life, where he honed a remarkable ability to observe others from society’s sidelines. Many cite a 1633 legal document in which Avercamp’s mother refers to him as “her mute and miserable son” (haeren stommen ende miserabelen soene), reinforcing an unproven connection between “muteness” and “misery.”
But more recently, art historians working from the perspective of disability studies have sought to re-frame these assumptions about Avercamp’s lived experience.
Learning from the greats
Avercamp was just one of multiple artists nicknamed “de Stomme”: inventories published between 1476 and 1586 list the deaf and mute painters Gillis Stomme, Jan Stomme, Willeken de Stomme, Henneeken de Stomme and Melsen Halders de Stomme. All of these artists could have freely practiced this profession without the requirement of speech. However, each would have developed their artistic skills in response to their own personal circumstances and circles of creative influence.
For example, as the son of an affluent family, Avercamp had the opportunity to train as a painter in Amsterdam with the Danish portraitist Pieter Isaacks. There, he also absorbed the work of notable Flemish painters like David Vinckboons, an early proponent of winter ice scenes. His 1602 ink and wash drawing uses a monochromatic palette of black and gray that turns the page’s white surface into a sheet of ice for figures to traverse.
Observation and preparation
The emphasis on Avercamp’s visual acuity resulting from “muteness” also minimizes his sophisticated artistic strategies. Although his scenes may convincingly appear recorded right from the frozen shore, a trove of preparatory drawings demonstrate how he carefully amassed source material based on sketches of individual figures or groups to adjust and recycle for different finished scenes. These could be sketched from real-life encounters or from models posing in his studio.
For example, his small sketch Man with a Stick reverberates in the form of a slightly portlier gentleman in a hat and white ruff, participating in the popular game of colf at the right hand-edge of the finished Skaters, Colf Players, and Sleighs on a Frozen River. He leans on his club (kliek) in the same position while watching his companion.
Avercamp applied this same approach to the theme and action of observation itself. In Skaters, Colf Players, and Sleighs on a Frozen River (and many other scenes), he anchors the sheet’s corners with marginal figures who seem to stand apart. They turn their backs on us as they gaze back towards the ice: here, a seated skater watches from the right; at left, a couple in tattered attire stride on with baskets and bindles, casting a shadow onto Avercamp’s own monogrammed signature on the ground below. Was this a coded statement for his personal relationship to the society he so carefully portrayed?
Avercamp’s winter world
Without a surviving account of the artist’s experience as “the mute from Kampen,” it is impossible to guess how he might have personally identified with any specific member or group within the crowds he depicted. It is much more interesting to witness how he masterfully harnessed the harshness of winter into a spectacle of human activity in all its many forms, as wild and ever-changing as the weather.
The Getty Center exhibition On Thin Ice: Dutch Depictions of Extreme Weather, curated by Getty drawings curator Stephanie Schrader, explores the widespread regional cooling that historians now identify as the “Little Ice Age” and the ways in which Dutch artwork made during this time showcases technological ingenuity and resilience. See drawings by Avercamp, Vinckboons, and more in the exhibition through September 1, 2024.
