Dirk Langendijk (1748-1805)

Details

Dirk Langendijk (1748-1805)

An imaginary View of the Siege of Arnhem 16 January 1795 by the French with the Janskerk on Fire

signed and dated 'Dirk Langendijk inv.et fecit 1795.'; pencil, pen and brown ink, grey wash, black ink framing lines
347 x 518 mm.

Provenance

H.C. Valkema Blouw; Amsterdam, 2-4 March 1954, lot 641
with H. Marcus, Amsterdam/Düsseldorf, 1958

Literature

J.W. Niemeyer, R.J. te Rijdt, Aquarelles hollandaises du XVIIIe siècle du Cabinet des Dessins du Rijksmuseum d'Amsterdam, Paris, 1990, p. 90, under no. 39

Exhibited

Arnhem, 1958, no. 69
Utrecht, 1959/60, no. 41
Zeist, 1960, no. 38
Laren, 1963, no. 75
Nijmegen, 1965, no. 75
Bonn/Saarbrücken/Bochum, 1968/9, no. 85
Rheydt, 1971, no. 48
Bremen/Braunschweig/Stuttgart, 1979/80, no. 77
Fribourg/Passau/Trier/Aachen/Nuremberg, 1982/4, no. 58

Lot Essay

On 16 January 1795 the French started the Siege of Arnhem with a bombardment, after which the city surrendered the next day. The present lot is an imaginary view of the bombardment as very little in reality was destroyed; the Janskerk was never hit. One of its towers was demolished in 1809 and it was completely demolished in 1817.
The canal on the right where men are working at the fire-extinguisher designed by Jan van der Heyden is also imaginary, as well as the houses around the church.
A watercolour of the same subject dated 1801 is in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam (Niemeyer, Te Rijdt, op.cit., no. 39), another similar drawing is in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem.
Langendijk used H. Spilman's etching from Het Verheerlijkt Nederland, I, 1745, no. 85 as model for the drawing of the Janskerk

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