Three figure studies

Hendrick Avercamp's output as a draughtsman largely consists of finished landscape drawings directly made for the art market. Many of them showing winter scenes, these drawings were worked up with watercolour and often carry Avercamp’s monogram. In contrast to these finished works, a number of often smaller figure drawings survive. The largest group of such drawings, over forty in total, is in the Royal Collection, Windsor (inv. 6465, 6466, 6468-6513; see 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, nos. 240-286, ill.). Probably drawn from life, these sheets were kept in the artist's studio to serve as models for staffage in paintings.