OLD MASTERS - A painted winter

Winter

'through the eyes' of OLD MASTERS 

Although there is no snow anymore here.....

but in other parts of the world there certainly is.

When I lived in Hamburg, the very large lake "the Alster"

which is in the center of the city, was sometimes completely frozen over.

 

From my apartment I could walk down to the lake in less than 5 minutes

to enjoy all the activities going on.

Meeting friends, watching all the ice skaters 

and walking from one side of the lake to the other.

 

"The Alster", Hamburg around 1900

(www.bildarchiv-hamburg.de)

When I look these Old Master paintings

it brings back to me my time in Hamburg.

Although - we certainly were dressed in a somewhat different way!

Adam Van Breen, The Hague 1590 - 1645

'Winter Landscape with Skating Scene'

(Private collection, Belgium)
   

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Adam Van Breen

'Winter Landscape with Elegant Skaters'

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Adam Van Breen (Gemaeldegalerie Berlin)

Adam Van Breen

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Hendrick Avercamp

born 1585 - May 15 in Amsterdam

Dutch painter, active in Kampen, 
the most famous exponent of the winter landscape.
He was deaf and dumb and known
as "de Stomme van Kampen"  - the mute of Kampen.

'A Scene on the Ice', Teylers Museum, Haarlem

As one of the first landscape painters of the 17th-century Dutch school,
Avercamp links the archaic decorative conseption of Flemish origins and 
the new realist and objective ambitions  developped
in Holland by Essaias van de Velde and Jan van Goyen.
His paintings are colorful and lively, with carefully observed skaters,
tobogganers, golfers, and pedestrians.

Avercamp's work enjoyed great popularity and he sold his drawings,
many of which are tinted with water-color, as finished pictures
to be pasted into the albums of collectors.

(An outstanding collection is at Windsor Castle, England)

'A Scene on the Ice near a Town' - 1610

National Gallery, London

Hendrick Avercamp died 1634 in Kampen, the Netherlands

and was interred in the Sint Nicolaaskerk in Kampen.

Book available at amazon

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and last another Flemish painter:

Pieter van Maes

Rotterdam, second half 17th-century

(he was last mentioned in 1703, valuing an estate in Den Haag)