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1 of 253523 objects
A game of 'kolf' on the ice c.1620
Pencil, red chalk, pen and ink and wash, watercolour and bodycolour | 17.6 x 23.8 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 906470
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A pen and ink and watercolour drawing of a scene on the ice, with a man on the left, watched by a peasant in a cap, about to putt a ball towards a marker. He is watched by a group of elegantly dressed figures and a dog on the right. A woman skates forward from the centre. In the background are two sleighs and a sledge drawn by caparisoned horses, and numerous skaters and walkers.
The deaf-mute Hendrick Avercamp, based in the provincial Dutch town of Kampen, was the first Netherlandish artist to specialise in paintings (and drawings) of winter scenes. Here he has drawn a game of kolf op het ijs, the winter version of kolf in which players hit a ball towards a pole; the fashionable costumes of the onlookers suggest a date of around 1620. The Royal Collection holds roughly one-third of Avercamp’s surviving drawings, many attractively finished in watercolour and probably made to be sold rather than as studies for paintings. That was no doubt the immediate purpose of the present drawing, although the figure of the man playing kolf and the sleigh in the background are to be found in a circular painting by Avercamp of a winter landscape in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg.
Michiel Plomp has identified in the Royal Collection around sixty drawings that were included in the auction of Abraham Van Broyel’s collection, held in Amsterdam on 30 October 1759 and succeeding days. These were among over a hundred Dutch and Flemish drawings acquired at the sale by the dealer Pieter Yver (1712-87), who, if not acting directly for the Prince of Wales, presumably sold the group of sixty to the Prince (or King) shortly thereafter. The present drawing was probably one of a pair by Avercamp in the van Broyel sale. Each was described as ‘A Winter scene with many figures, drawn with washes, height 5, width 8 inches’; the second drawing depicts Two ladies and a gentleman on a horse-drawn sleigh, the measurements of which correspond closely with those given in the sale catalogue.Provenance
Abraham van Broyel sale, Amsterdam, 30 October 1759, lot D216 'Een ditto, in dezelve manier en van ditto groote'; bought by Pieter Yver (fl.59 with D215); probably acquired by George III; 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
Pencil, red chalk, pen and ink and wash, watercolour and bodycolour
Measurements
17.6 x 23.8 cm (sheet of paper)
Featured in
ExhibitionMasters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer: The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace
Presenting 28 masterpieces from the Royal Collection, the exhibition includes works by Gerrit Dou, Gabriel Metsu, Jan Steen and Pieter de Hooch, and Johannes Vermeer's 'A Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman'.
ExhibitionDutch Landscapes: The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace
42 remarkable Dutch landscapes celebrating the prosperity of the seventeenth century Dutch Republic