A Woman Doing Laundry in an Ice Hole (recto); Two Gentlemen (verso)

About the Artwork

Seventeenth-century Dutch artist Hendrick Avercamp became widely known for his near-exclusive production of winter landscapes, often featuring large crowds made up of different social classes congregated on the Netherlands’ iced canals and rivers and engaged in various activities from ice skating and socializing to doing laundry, fishing, and hauling goods. In this drawing, he sketched a woman squatting to do laundry at a hole in the ice, accompanied by a child who wipes tears from her eyes. On the verso (back) of the same sheet, two men in elegant, middle-class attire appear to be socializing. The artist kept such sheets in his workshop for reference in his larger, multi-figured, finished compositions.