A scene on the ice outside a town c.1620
Pen and brown ink with brown wash and watercolour over graphite | 18.5 x 19.9 cm (whole object) | RCIN 906472
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A drawing of people walking on the ice: on the left, an elegantly dressed couple stand looking at a boy seated with a warming (?) box on his lap (a separate piece of paper covers part of the original drawing of this figure); behind, to the right, two gentlemen in cloaks are watching another kneeling and tying the shoe of a lady in a ruff, who holds her muff to her face; behind are numerous figures and horses, with a town or village in the background. The elegant couple and the two men on the right are a virtual repetition of the figures in RCIN 906480. All four recur in a signed painting on copper of a Scene on the Ice. RCIN 906465-906513 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 brown wash and watercolour over graphite
Measurements
18.5 x 19.9 cm (whole object)