A Woman Doing Laundry in an Ice Hole (recto)

1618

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Dominant colour

A Woman Doing Laundry in an Ice Hole (recto) is a 1618 by Hendrick Avercamp, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Hendrick Avercamp
When & what style?: 1618 · Baroque
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

A woman kneels on frozen ice, scrubbing clothes in a small hole cut through it. Nearby, a child wipes tears from their face, maybe from the cold. Avercamp loved painting winter scenes in the Netherlands, where canals froze solid every year. People of all classes mixed on the ice—skating, working, or just staying warm. This sketch feels quick, like he caught a real moment. If you like this, look up *impasto*—a technique where paint is laid on thick, almost like frost on the ice.

The story of this work

Overview

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…

Did you know?

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 kolf, a ball and paddle game played on the ice that appears frequently in the artist’s winter scenes.

Read the full account in the museum source.