The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of May 31, 2026

A chalk and watercolor drawing on blue paper depicts a woman with light skin tone kneeling and facing left. She leans forward to rinse a red cloth in a hole in the ice. She wears a pale dress, dark vest, and white cap. In the foreground sits a wooden bucket. To her right stands a second woman wearing a blue skirt and white cap, her right hand pressed to her face.

A Woman Doing Laundry in an Ice Hole (recto)

c. 1618

Hendrick Avercamp

(Netherlandish, 1585–1634)
Netherlands
black and red chalk, graphite, watercolor heightened with white on blue paper
Sheet: 11.7 x 13.4 cm (4 5/8 x 5 1/4 in.)
Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund 2024.74.a
Location: Not on view

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.

Description

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 socializing. The artist kept such sheets in his workshop for reference in his larger, multi-figured, finished compositions.
  • {{cite web|title=A Woman Doing Laundry in an Ice Hole (recto)|url=false|author=Hendrick Avercamp|year=c. 1618|access-date=31 May 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2024.74.a