Elegantly dressed figures walking on the ice c.1615-1620
Pen and brown ink and watercolour over traces of graphite | 11.5 x 13.3 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 906480
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A drawing of people walking on the ice, with an elderly couple side by side in the centre foreground: he is in a high-crowned hat and ruff, and she is wearing a huik and has her hands in a muff. On the right there are two men in high-crowned hats, one with a millstone ruff. Behind them, to the left, there are two well-dressed couples, and a peasant with folded arms. In the distance there is a gallows, a sailing-boat, and a windmill. The central couple and the two men on the right are a virtual repetition of the figures in RCIN 906472. 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 and watercolour over traces of graphite
Measurements
11.5 x 13.3 cm (sheet of paper)