Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634) has been described as “the undisputed master of winter landscapes of the Dutch Golden Age.” “Avercamp” is not exactly a household word on this side of the Atlantic, although I suspect that many museum visitors who wouldn’t recognize his name have admired his luminous outdoor scenes full of small, agile figures. In his native Netherlands, by contrast, he is a celebrated artist with an eager and enthusiastic following, today as in his lifetime. (That multiple versions of some Avercamps exist, along with pictures made by other painters in his style, indicate that his work was sought after.) Is a taste for Avercamp a particularly Dutch attribute?

It’s tempting to assume so, since his best loved and often best pictures—images of crowds of skaters—distill and concentrate the dizzy rapture that present-day Netherlanders feel on those increasingly rare occasions when the canals freeze and everyone heads for the ice. This is not a small matter: the reported amount the Dutch spent on new skates the last time the phenomenon occurred would be impressive in a country with three times the population. In the same vein, we can see the small size and multiple figures of Avercamp’s works as reflections of the intimate scale and density of Dutch towns. Similarly, we can recognize the long views and insistent flatness of his frozen spaces as absolutely typical of the Dutch countryside and read the mix of types and classes among his throngs of skaters as a manifestation of