On the back: a fishing boat
Pen and ink in bister with fine watercolour on laid paper;
on the reverse pen and ink in bister, reworked in pencil and ink: 15,9 x 17,9 cm
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Notes
This sheet, drawn on both sides, probably came from a sketchbook. The front side was executed later and coloured in a characteristic manner. The provenance is unusually early and significant. Lankrink was the son of a German “Glückritter” (Lugt) who died in Antwerp. There he received his first training as a painter and later became a workshop employee of the important English portrait painter Peter Lely. Like the latter, Lankrink was also a passionate collector of drawings and acquired many of his master’s works at the estate auction.
Although Hendrick Avercamp did not invent the winter landscape, the emergence of it as a distinct and popular genre in Dutch art can be attributed almost entirely to Hendrick Avercamp. His lively paintings, full of frost and silvery air, capture the joy that arose in the Netherlands when temperatures dropped, canals and rivers froze, and crowds of skaters ventured onto the ice. The harsh winters which occurred during Avercamp’s lifetime gave the artist ample opportunity to witness first-hand the effects of frigid weather on everyday life. Between the fourteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, the Northern Hemisphere experienced a climatic shift known as the Little Ice Age. Winter often arrived early and lasted well into spring, marked by heavy snowfall and frozen waterways. Dutch artists, inspired by the arctic weather of the Little Ice Age, painted winter landscapes throughout the seventeenth century, often moving toward an increasing naturalism in their depictions. None, however, managed to capture the imagination of viewers so thoroughly as Avercamp did with his elaborate scenes of diversions on ice, which for generations have defined the image of winter in the Netherlands.
Provenance
Literature
Exhibition