Researching the painting

Before I started to come up with ideas for my film I wanted to know a little more about Hendrick Avercamp the painter. He was Dutch, grew up in the town of Kampen in the 16^th century and was deaf and dumb. He was locally known as ‘ The mute of Kampen’.



When I first saw ‘A winter scene with skaters near a castle’ I imagined Avercamp painting it whilst sitting on a hill overlooking the town. I discovered however that it was painted entirely from his imagination. Everything from the people to the castle sprung from his mind and did not exist. It made me look at the painting very differently and made me think that he was possibly trying to paint what he wished his town could be like. The people in the painting look like they happily interact with each other mixing from all classes of society. Some are going about their everyday business such as work and others are just playing on the ice. The sensory deprivation Avercamp had made these interactions more poignant and therefore made it a central theme to the painting for me.