Averkamp Hendrik

Avercamp Hendrick (Avercamp Hendrick nicknamed “Mute of Campen”, “De Stomme van Campen”) (1585-1634), Dutch Baroque painter. Born in Amsterdam, Hendrik Averkamp was baptized on January 27, 1585. In 1586, the Averkamp family moved to Kampen, where his father opened a pharmacy business. On his mother’s side, Averkamp was the grandson of the scholar Peter Meroutanus. Probably on the basis of his natural deafness, Averkamp was never able to learn to speak properly. He received lessons in writing and drawing from his mother, and was later able to express his feelings in drawings.

From the age of twelve, Hendrik Averkamp was apprenticed to a poor drawing teacher, an apprenticeship that did not last long as the master fell victim to a plague epidemic. Around the age of eighteen, Averkamp moved to Amsterdam, where he began to study painting under the Danish artist Pieter Isachsz. Also in Averkamp’s early works there is a noticeable influence of the Flemish school, in particular the landscape painter Gilisse van Koninxloo.