The Climate Justice of Hendrick Avercamp

Hendrick Avercamp, Skaters, Colf Players, and Sleighs on a Frozen River with a Ship at Right and a Dike at Left, 1624. Private collection

The golden age of Dutch Baroque art coincided with a cooling trend that affected much of the northern hemisphere. The cold was often blamed on witches and Jews. In the "horribly cold" summer of 1675 Paris, Madame de Sévigné struck a more enlightened tone: "we think the behavior of the sun and of the seasons has changed." 

Today's climate scientists now recognize a Little Ice Age that affected Europe and North America from about 1500 to 1700. Theorized causes include volcanic emissions, solar cycles, changes in ocean currents, and decreases in the global population brought on by the Black Death, Genghis Kahn, and/or colonialism. With the Grim Reaper leaving fields untilled, forests presumably recovered lost ground, removing planet-warming CO2 from the atmosphere. 

An unusually snowy 16th-century winter may have prompted Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Hunters in the Snow (Winter), 1565. The later Dutch winter scenes draw on such Flemish precedents. Holland experienced record cold in 1607-8 and 1620-21, freezing canals and rivers. This led to new ways of coping, playing, and socializing in a winter wonderland/hellscape. Henrick Avercamp was Bruegel, or even Watteau, on ice. He invented the frozen canal as a stage on which aristocrats mingle with slapstick buffoons in the risible costumes demanded by the elements. 

Small detail of Hendrick Avercamp's oil painting, Winter Scene on a Frozen Canal, about 1620. LACMA 

Avercamp and climate change are dual themes of the Getty Museum's "On Thin Ice: Dutch Depictions of Extreme Weather" ( through Sep. 1, 2024).  It brings together about a dozen Avercamp drawings and two of his paintings, notably the great Winter Scene on a Frozen Canal from LACMA's Carter collection. There are also wintry drawings by Esaias van de Velde, Jan van Goyen, Hendrik Meyer, and others, up to the late 18th century. It's not a bad way of cooling off during what's likely to be the globe's hottest summer ever. 

Hendrick Avercamp, Winter Scene on a Frozen Canal, about 1620. LACMA 

Avercamp's biography is a question mark. Documents say he was mute (and probably deaf?) Though born in Amsterdam, he adopted the earthy realism of Bruegel. He may have  known, or even studied with, David Vinckboons or Gillis van Conixloo III, Flemish artists active in Amsterdam. In the best Flemish tradition, Avercamp reminds us that the ice was also a public toilet. A fallen skater in the Carter painting bleeds onto the ice—"funny" is someone else's pain. 

Hendrick Avercamp, figure studies, late 1620s or unknown. Private collection

Fellow Dutch artist Jan van Goyen owned 900 of Avercamp's drawings. Many of Avercamp's surviving drawings are figure and costume studies that would be used and reused in paintings (not unlike Watteau's practice a century later). Avercamp also produced small color drawings as finished works of art, marking their independent status with his monogram signature.

Hendrick Avercamp, A Winter Scene with Two Gentlemen Playing Colf, about 1615-20. Getty Museum

Visitors to Holland are often surprised to learn that the winter frolics of golden age art hardly exist today. What ice there is is too thin to support the horse-drawn sleighs of Avercamp's pictures. Sports such as colf—the icebound precursor of the game of Tiger Woods—would be risky. This is the combined result of the waning of the Little Ice Age and the endless summer set off by the 18th-century industrial revolution.

David van Bremden, after Jacob Gerritsz. Cuyp, Couple Falls Through the Ice, in Jacob Cats' Werelts begin, midden, eynde, bespoken in den thou-ringh, 1637

What did Dutch winter scenes mean to their audiences? A positive spin is that plucky folk have always prevailed against the elements (so far). Yet 17th-century audiences may well have sensed that their climate was venturing into uncharted territory. Avercamp would have been aware of Bruegel's illustrated proverbs. In contemporary moralizing texts, thin ice could represent the perils of love. The fallen merrymakers of Avercamp's ice scenes have been connected to a Dutch figure of speech that translates "the slipperiness of human life"—meaning its fragility. 

Esaias van de Velde, Winter Landscape with Tower, about 1613-14. Getty Museum

Esaias van de Velde, Winter Scene, 1616. Private collection

Allart van Everdingen, Skating Scene, about 1650. Private collection

Jan van Goyen, Winter Landscape with Skaters, 1653. Private collection

Jan Berents, Winter Landscape with Figures, about 1723. Getty Museum

Hendrik Meyer, A Winter Scene, 1787. Getty Museum