Zaandam – Hendrik Greven + Frans Buffa, 1838

“Tentjagt. Retour de la Promenade à Zaandam”, [Tent yacht. Returning from an excursion to Zaandam]. lithograph made by Hendrik Greven, published in Amsterdam as part of “Souvenirs de la Hollande by Frans Buffa & Zonen in 1838. With original hand colouring. Size: (image) 15.8″ × 19.9 cm (including text: 19.9 × 19.9 cm).

The print depicts a so-called ‘tentjacht,’ a covered pleasure craft, which has just moored, while passengers in Zaan regional costume disembark and are welcomed on the quay. Such vessels were used for excursions through the water-rich regions of North Holland.

In the background appear the wooden houses of Zaandam, with their characteristic gabled façades and neatly trimmed trees lining the water. The Zaan region ranked among the earliest industrialised areas of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with hundreds of windmills employed in a wide range of industries, from sawmills and oil mills to dye works and paper mills. At the same time, the area retained a distinctly rural and picturesque character, with wooden houses and narrow waterways.

In this lithograph, Hendrik Greven (1787-1854) presents not only Zaandam itself, but also an idealised image of nineteenth-century Holland: orderly, prosperous, and picturesque.

Prijs: Euro 275,-