Alive
Painted about 1608. The ice is full. Nearly 200 people are out on it: skating, playing kolf, pushing sledges, riding in a horse-drawn sleigh, flirting, begging, falling over. A brewery called The Half Moon stands on the left, and its sign carries the 2 lions from the coat of arms of Antwerp. Avercamp signed the panel on the fisherman’s hut at the right, scrawled like graffiti. He hid rude jokes in the crowd. A bare behind sticks out of a small boat, a man is peeing against a tree, and a couple is lying together in a haystack. At the lower left crows and a dog eat a horse that has frozen to death. Hardly anyone in the picture is looking at any of it. Avercamp could not speak and was probably deaf. People called him the Mute of Kampen, after the town he moved to in 1608, the year of this picture. The winter of 1607 to 1608 was one of the hardest of the Little Ice Age. His winters sold so well that he painted them in summer too. The panel is 77 cm by 132. The Rijksmuseum bought it in 1897.
look closer
The brick building is a brewery, The Half Moon. Avercamp gave its sign the 2 lions from the coat of arms of Antwerp.
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