Today is St. Patrick's Day, a cultural celebration of 'being Irish'.

Someone at work told me that the parade on this day started in New York City, not in Ireland, but now it is also celebrated in the old country.

Quite a few people came dressed in green to work today. I tried 'soda bread' (not nice) and Irish cheese (nice).

An exhibition with winter landscapes by Hendrick Avercamp will open this Sunday in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Hendrick Avercamp (1585 – 1634) is generally considered the greatest winter landscape artist of the Dutch Golden Age; this exhibition features 30 of his finest works.

"The Little Ice Age" was very popular in Amsterdam where it drew large crowds. Appropriately, the exhibition was on display during one of the coldest winters in the Netherlands in many years. As the Dutch newspaper Het Parool put it, "an art exhibition couldn’t be any more topical". A selection of 17th-century Dutch ice skates will also be on view.

"Quintessential representations of 17th-century Holland"

"Avercamp's images capture a timeless quality that resonates to this day, making his winter landscapes quintessential representations of 17th-century Holland," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "We are grateful to the museums and private collectors in Europe and the United States who graciously agreed to lend their delicate Avercamp paintings and drawings for the exhibition."

Hendrick Avercamp was born in Amsterdam, but he lived and worked in Kampen, far removed from the artistic centers of Amsterdam and Haarlem. He was known to contemporaries as the "Stomme van Kampen" (Mute of Kampen), for he was not able to speak and was possibly deaf. He had a sharp eye for visual anecdote and —-although he painted in a style that reflected the 16th-century pictorial traditions of winter scenes by Pieter Bruegel the Elder—- his cast of characters and their activities became the primary focus of his work. Avercamp was the first artist to specialize in winter landscapes that feature people enjoying themselves on the ice, thus making the "ice scene" a genre in its own right.

Avercamp's paintings and drawings will be shown in the intimate Dutch Cabinet Galleries. On Friday March 19 Dutch skate collector Anrie Broere will give a public lecture; on the opening day of the exhibition Pieter Roelofs, curator of 17th-century paintings, and Bianca M. du Mortier, curator of costume, Rijksmuseum will speak.

Hendrick Avercamp: The Little Ice Age
March 21 through July 5, 2010
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
http://www.nga.gov