Two families with sledges on the ice c.1620
Pen and brown ink with watercolour and touches of bodycolour over graphite | 12.5 x 22.5 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 906468
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A drawing of a scene on the ice with a man in a fur hat pushing his wife and child in a simple wooden sledge, and on the right a man pulling a similar sledge also carrying his wife and child. There are three skaters in the background. RL 6465-6513 amount to nearly one third of Avercamp's known drawings and represent the largest holding in one collection. They cover all categories of his drawings- studies of single figures, and groups, genre scenes and landscapes- and illustrate his considerable variety in finish and technique. In general the artist did not make preparatory drawings. They seem to have been made for their own sake, and some of the more finished coloured sheets were probably sold. The remainder served as a vocabulary of human behaviour as for the most part seen in the provincial town of Kampen.
Provenance
First recorded in a Royal Collection inventory of c.1810 (Inv. A, p. 118: '42. Drawings of some Master in the Stile of Breughel, representing the Diversions of the Dutch and Flemish on the Ice &c: with some Drawings of single figures for the Dresses only').
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Creator(s)
Acquirer(s)
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Medium and techniques
Pen and brown ink with watercolour and touches of bodycolour over graphite
Measurements
12.5 x 22.5 cm (sheet of paper)