Ice-Skating in a Village

A wide frozen river fills with skaters, sledges and busy townsfolk beneath a pale winter sky in this early scene by Hendrick Avercamp. Painted about 1610, it comes from the moment the “Little Ice Age” winters made Dutch canals reliable skating grounds, and Avercamp — known in his own time as “the mute of Kampen” for his disability — became the master of the genre. Seen from a high viewpoint that lets the eye travel across the ice, the panel teems with the small incidents that give his winter scenes their enduring charm.