Avercamp, Hendrick (b. 1585, Amsterdam; d. 1634, Kampen). 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). As one of the first landscape painters of the 17th-century Dutch school, Avercamp links the archaic decorative conception 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 o...