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Source Description
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.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
675347
label
A Woman Doing Laundry in an Ice Hole (recto)
core
obj
dtoType
drawing
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
675347
contentType
drawing
title
A Woman Doing Laundry in an Ice Hole (recto)
description
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.
date
c. 1618
rights
CC0
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
creators
675343
genreSpecific
Drawing
imageCount
1
source
import
dimensionsRaw
Sheet: 11.7 x 13.4 cm (4 5/8 x 5 1/4 in.)
cul
Netherlands
accession
2024.74.a
Source extras
tec
black and red chalk, graphite, watercolor heightened with white on blue paper
tombstone
A Woman Doing Laundry in an Ice Hole (recto), c. 1618. Hendrick Avercamp (Netherlandish, 1585–1634). Black and red chalk, graphite, watercolor heightened with white on blue paper; sheet: 11.7 x 13.4 cm (4 5/8 x 5 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund, 2024.74.a
collection
DR - Dutch
didYouKnow
Though incomplete due to the cut of the sheet, the gestures of the men on the back of this drawing suggest they could be engaged in a game of <em>kolf, </em>a ball and paddle game played on the ice that appears frequently in the artist’s winter scenes.
creditline
Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
updatedAt
2026-05-29 09:14:33.636000
sourceId
675347
dept
Drawings
coll
DR - Dutch
med
black and red chalk, graphite, watercolor heightened with white on blue paper
creatorTags
male
thumbnail_url
image_url
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
photo
mediaId
fd9b307b543ac672