Hendrick Avercamp

Hendrick Avercamp
1585-1634
(image source: wikimedia)
no copyright infringement intended

Dutch painter and draughtsman who spent most of his life in Kampen; nicknamed De Stomme van Kampen (the mute of Kampen, this coming from his speech impairment); famous for his winter landscapes, featuring abundant amounts of people skating on frozen lakes; the epoch he lived remained known as the Little Ice Age, which explains his thematic (by the way, the Little Ice Age occurred after the end of the Medieval Warm Period, so I am wandering what will come after the present-day Global Warming); as icy as it was that period, his paintings breath warmth, are full of joyous life and funny details; his passion in depicting skating characters seemingly comes from childhood, when the boy was an enthusiastic practitioner of all kind of ice sports; the bulk of his artwork is now at Rijksmuseum and Mauritshuis.

• Winter Games on the Frozen River IJssel

(Old Masters)