Room 20

A frozen waterway and a crowded ferry give you two different ways to enter the pictures here. Look for small figures going about their business, then notice how much space the painter gives to water and sky. Works on display include Avercamp’s A Scene on the Ice near a Town and river scenes by Jan van de Cappelle. Paintings of daily life and landscape found buyers across the seventeenth-century Netherlands. They can look casual while depending on carefully arranged groups, changes of scale and reflected light. Choose one figure or boat to follow before taking in the whole view.