Hendrick Avercamp, 'A Winter Scene with Skaters near a Castle', about 1608-9

Seventeenth-century Dutch winters were notorious for their Arctic cold, with canals and rivers frozen over. In the town that Avercamp takes us to, everyone is out on the ice making the best of it: working, playing, showing off, laughing, complaining, falling over or just about managing to stand up. Boats are frozen in, horses pull sleighs over the ice. The luscious pink castle looks almost like a giant, iced Christmas cake. Birds chirp cheerfully on the leafless branches of the trees.

Hendrick Avercamp led the way in making pictures of ‘life on the ice’. His painting career started around the time the Little Ice Age hit Northern Europe; he spent it producing these winter pictures and only rarely left his little town of Kampen – though the painting shows an imaginary place, not Kampen.

We look down from a height, so that the view of the town and beyond is wide and open. Each tiny figure is no bigger than a fingernail, yet even if they have their back to us, we know what kind of person they are, and we can discover the story of each one. Between the trees near to us, a group of rich and poor alike mingle and indulge in people watching – just as we do through the round peephole of the picture.

A little to the right of the group, and we‘re in the realm of real finery. This couple would have spent a fortune on their amazing costumes, hardly suitable for skating but the height of fashion and a must to be shown off. The man’s sword is an encumbrance but at least they’re well padded if they fall. Further to the right, a splendid sleigh with a gold coat of arms on the back jingles into the picture. Three couples, hand-in-hand, parade up the centre as if in a formal dance.

On the left, by the brown house with a window-shutter that needs mending, a snowball chase is going on: two bad lads are after a girl who has a snowball sticking to her back. A toddler escapes, arms outstretched towards mum and dad, who lean over the gate to see the fun. With a couple of tiny strokes of the brush Avercamp makes the toddler run yelling to them.

In front of the castle sits a man huddled in a blanket, a hat plonked flat on his head. Unbelievably, his legs are bare and his feet appear to be immersed in water through a hole in the ice. A punishment? Some sort of cure perhaps? Just behind him, another man falls with a splash through thinner ice close to the castle wall. And prominent, attached to the side of the tower, a small grey privy – or toilet – is put to copious use, regardless of anyone who might be standing below.

Avercamp was acutely aware of bodies in movement, expressing emotion and when making sound. Each minute figure has a distinct, often comic, personality, with a voice. They were prepared in tiny, meticulous drawings, some tinted with watercolour. He then transferred them into the painting with a few economical strokes of the brush, crowding the canvas with cameos of life on the ice. We seem to hear the cries, splashes, chatter, the horse’s hooves, the swish of the skates – the whole exuberant life that comes from his vibrant paintings.