A Man O'War Lying at Anchor
Johannes Christiaan Schotel
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Dordrecht native Johannes Christiaan Schotel was the Netherlands’s preeminent marine painter in the nineteenth century. His clientele included Prince William VI (1772-1843) (the future William I, King of the Netherlands) and various international patrons, including the English diplomat and collector Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850). Schotel’s work, like that of his close contemporary J.M.W. Turner, reveals an admiration for, and dialogue with, seventeenth-century seascape painting, while often also reflecting recent history. For a contemporary audience, the combination of the anchored man-of-war, blue sky and calm water, and apparently commercial, rather than military, activity of the waterfront in this sheet might have operated as an expression of the peace and prosperity that followed the end of the Napoleonic wars and control of the Netherlands. The scene is populated by figures—members of distinctly different classes—at work. On the quay at left, laborers roll barrels to be loaded onto, or unloaded from, a rotating crane. In the boat in the foreground, two officers in bicorn hats are accompanied by a group of sailors. Even the poor figures on the shore appear happy with their prospects. (JSS, 8/23/2018)
Drawings and Prints
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.