A Wooded River Landscape with a Church and Figures

Hendrick Avercamp

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Here, on a sheet hardly larger than a postcard, the artist invites the viewer to enter the composition with the woman at lower left, wandering from the woodland, past the tavern, the brook, the church, the shepherds, and the roadside cross, to a riverbank at right, from where the view leads to a city at the foot of a mountain chain. Although drawings by Avercamp survive in relatively large numbers, most are quick sketches of figures or other motifs. His finished drawings are much rarer, and the present one is among his best of an imaginary landscape. A comparable sheet bears an inscription stating that it was sold in 1613 directly by Avercamp, confirming that his finished drawings were appreciated by collectors—and produced by the artist—as works of art in their own right. They must have delighted by the charm of the composition, the detail and lightness of the execution, and the freshness of the colors—and they still are able to do so today.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art