A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

1346. A WINTER SCENE.

Hendrik van Avercamp (Dutch: 1585-1663).

A characteristically animated work by the Mute of Kampen, as this painter was called. He was the son of a schoolmaster. He was born dumb, and documents have been discovered in which his mother speaks of her "dumb and pitiable son." Having shown an early talent for drawing, he was placed with a painter at Amsterdam, and there and at the Hague he practised until 1625. He afterwards joined his widowed mother at Kampen. In her will of 1633 she made provision for him "in order that he may not be a burden on his brothers and sister." He loved especially to depict lively scenes of winter sport. He defines his figures sharply against the ice and snow. "The refined modulations of tint and the delicacies of aerial perspective, aimed at by painters of such scenes in the middle of the 17th century, are seldom found in Avercamp's works" (Official Catalogue).