Avercamp's Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters (c.1608): The Frozen River Where Everyone Is Up to Something

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Hendrick Avercamp painted Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters around 1608, in oil on oak panel. It shows hundreds of Dutch villagers on a frozen river, made by a deaf and mute artist during the Little Ice Age. Look closely and you find lovers, a dead horse and a man relieving himself.

Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters, c.1608. Oil on panel, 77.3 x 131.9 cm. Held in an Amsterdam collection. Public domain image.

The facts at a glance

Artist: Hendrick Avercamp (baptized 1585 in Amsterdam, died 1634 in Kampen)
Date: about 1608
Technique: oil on panel (three horizontal oak planks), 77.3 x 131.9 cm
Subject: a crowded frozen river, a village and a winter day seen from a high viewpoint
Today: Amsterdam, acquired in 1897 with the help of the Vereniging Rembrandt

Who was the painter known as the mute of Kampen?

Avercamp was baptized in Amsterdam in January 1585, and his family moved to Kampen the following year. He was deaf and mute from birth and was known in Kampen as "de Stomme van Kampen", the mute of Kampen. He probably trained in Amsterdam with the portrait painter Pieter Isaacsz, and he spent most of his working life in Kampen, where he died in 1634.

He is remembered almost entirely for winter scenes, which the Dutch called wintertjes, and he also sold finely tinted drawings as finished pictures for collectors to paste into albums.

Why did the Little Ice Age matter to this painting?

Avercamp grew up in one of the coldest stretches of the Little Ice Age, a long cool period in Europe. The winter of 1607 to 1608 was especially hard, and it is the likely backdrop for this panel. Rivers and canals that stayed liquid in most years froze solid enough to carry a whole town.

A cold winter was a hardship and a holiday at once, and Avercamp painted both. Before him, winter in Northern painting was mostly a season in a calendar or a setting for a saint. He was the first Dutch painter to make it a specialty. The great earlier model is Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow, and Avercamp is thought to have drawn on Bruegel's Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap of 1563 for this scene.

How do you read a crowd of hundreds?

The trick is to stop looking for the centre. The viewpoint is high, almost like a map, and tall trees on the sides frame a river that runs back into pale distance. Hundreds of people are spread over the ice, and they come from every level of society. Some skate for pleasure and some play kolf, a forerunner of golf. Others pull sleighs, fish with an eel spear or work to free a frozen boat because they have to.

Read it in small patches, left to right, like a street. Avercamp painted the figures last, in short brushstrokes, and gave each skater a faint horizontal shadow on the ice.

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What are the hidden details in Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters?

Once you slow down, the picture turns out to be a collection of small stories, and not all of them are polite.

In the left foreground, crows and a dog feed on a horse that has frozen to death.
On a haystack, a couple embraces.
On the left, a bare-bottomed figure relieves himself, and Avercamp did not hide it.
A bird trap stands with footprints in the snow around it, and more traps are fixed to a gable.
Some skaters are not as steady as the picture first suggests, and the ice is crowded with people who have lost their footing.
Avercamp's signature appears like graffiti on the fisherman's hut at lower right.

Scholars have read the carcass, the bird trap and the faint mill in the distance as reminders that life is fragile and that ice cannot be trusted. The joke and the warning sit in the same frame.

Why does it still feel modern?

Because nobody is the hero. This is a social picture, closer to a busy street than to a history painting, and that is a very Dutch idea. It comes from the same world described in Dutch Golden Age: Vermeer, Rembrandt, and the Painters of Light, where ordinary life became a worthy subject. Where Avercamp spreads a whole town across a panorama, Vermeer's View of Delft holds a city still under one patch of light, and the two make a good pair on a wall.

It is also a winter picture that does not feel gloomy: pale blue, cream and soft brown, with small touches of red.

Zocine Art Design is an independent studio that prints classic paintings as wall art.

Frequently asked questions

Who painted Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters?

Hendrick Avercamp, a Dutch painter from Kampen, painted it around 1608.

Why was Hendrick Avercamp called the mute of Kampen?

He was deaf and mute from birth and lived in Kampen, so people called him "de Stomme van Kampen". It means the mute of Kampen.

What does Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters show?

It shows hundreds of people on a frozen river, skating, playing kolf, fishing and working. Small details include a dead horse, an embracing couple and a bird trap.