Lot Essay
Avercamp was the first Dutch artist to develop the tradition of ice scenes with fashionable and low-life amusements, based on the art of Flemish artists such as Pieter Brueghel, Hans Bol and Jan Brueghel, whose works he must have known.
As most recently pointed out by Michiel Plomp, the chronology of Avercamp's drawings is difficult to establish since only a few are dated, M. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, Haarlem, 1997, II, p. 47, no. 13. The handling of the trees and houses in the present lot may be compared to that in his view of Kampen at Windsor, C. White and C. Crawley, (The Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the fifteenth to the early nineteenth Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge, 1994, no. 281) and that of a farm and haystack in the drawing of Gypsies reading the Future in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Welcker and Hensbroek-van der Poel, op. cit., T. 118, plate XXVIII.
As Dr. Hans-Ulrich Beck has kindly pointed out, Dr. Carl Ruland, who bought the drawing in Suermondt's sale, was director of the printroom at Weimar, and was regularly commissioned to buy for the Grand Duke. The latter fled in 1945 taking with him some drawings which he later sold.
As most recently pointed out by Michiel Plomp, the chronology of Avercamp's drawings is difficult to establish since only a few are dated, M. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, Haarlem, 1997, II, p. 47, no. 13. The handling of the trees and houses in the present lot may be compared to that in his view of Kampen at Windsor, C. White and C. Crawley, (The Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the fifteenth to the early nineteenth Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge, 1994, no. 281) and that of a farm and haystack in the drawing of Gypsies reading the Future in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Welcker and Hensbroek-van der Poel, op. cit., T. 118, plate XXVIII.
As Dr. Hans-Ulrich Beck has kindly pointed out, Dr. Carl Ruland, who bought the drawing in Suermondt's sale, was director of the printroom at Weimar, and was regularly commissioned to buy for the Grand Duke. The latter fled in 1945 taking with him some drawings which he later sold.