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Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters

Painting showing a winter scene with many figures ice skating or working in the snow

Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters by Hendrick Avercamp, Public Domain

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Intro

Museum's Description
- This painting shows hundreds of people and animals on a snowy day. The artist has cleverly depicted how some people are able to enjoy the cold weather by ice-skating or playing hockey while others have to keep working, even in difficult conditions.
  
  If you hover your mouse over the image you can zoom in really close to see all the tiny detail. Take a closer look and see what activities you can see.
  
  Things to think about...
  - How many activities can you see?
  - Does it look like people are having fun?
  - Do you think that this painting is an idealised picture of a frozen, winter morning or accurate?
  - What kind of things do you think the frozen river would lead to - would any problems arise? How would you fix them?
- The high vantage point of this painting turns it into a sampler of human – and animal – activity during a harsh winter. Hundreds of people are out on the ice, most of them for pleasure, others working out of dire necessity. Avercamp did not shy away from grim details: in the left foreground crows and a dog feast on the carcass of a horse that has frozen to death.