Description
A view of Delft after the explosion of 1654 signed and dated 'Evander Poel 12 octob/1654' (Ev linked, lower left) oil on panel 131/4 x 19 3/8 in. (33.6 x 49.2 cm.) PROVENANCE Winckler Collection. Fran‡ois Duval, Geneva, from whom acquired in 1845 with the rest of the collection by Charles Auguste, Duc de Morny (1811-1865); 'Duval' sale; Phillips, London, 13 May 1846 [=2nd day], lot 67, 'The Town of Br‚da, after the fire occasioned by an explosion of powder - Vander Poel, who has frequently treated this subject, has excelled himself in this instance' (sold 36 gns.). Beriah Botfield (1807-1863), by 1863, by whom bequeathed to the Thynne family. LITERATURE B. Botfield, Catalogue of Pictures at Norton Hall, London, 1863, p. 31, 'The Town of Buda [ sic ] after the Fire, 1654'. T. Crombie, 'Beriah Botfield and his Dutch pictures at Longleat', Apollo, CV, February 1977, p. 106, fig. 12. N. MacLaren, revised by C. Brown, National Gallery Catalogues, Catalogue of the Dutch Schools, London, 1991, p. 307, under no. 1061, p. 308, note 6. NOTES On the morning of Monday, 12 October 1654, around ninety thousand pounds of gunpowder in one of Delft's powder magazines exploded devastating a large part of the city. This momentous event and the ensuing artistic reaction to it has recently been discussed at length in the catalogue of the exhibition Vermeer and the Delft School (New York, Metropolitan Museum, 8 March-27 May 2001; and London, National Gallery, 20 June-16 September 2001). The magazine, known as the Secreet van Holland, was situated in the north-eastern corner of the town, near to the Geergweg. The power of the blast was such that almost all of the buildings in the immediate vicinity were completely destroyed and many beyond damaged to varying degrees. The number of fatalities is unknown, but included the painter Carel Fabritius who was said to have been painting a portrait in his studio on the Doelenstraat at the time of the explosion. News of the disaster spread quickly around the country causing a national sensation. Joost van Vondel and Pieter de Witt both published poems about the event and Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia visited the city along with many others who came to witness the devastaion at first hand. Of the local artists who responded to the calamity (Daniel Vosmaer and Herman Saftleven among them), none capitalised more on the artistic possibilities of the ravaged scene than Egbert van der Poel. He might well have witnessed the explosion in person and was directly affected by the tragedy in the loss of his daughter, who was buried at the Nieuwe Kerk two days after the blast. The exact number of versions of the present work is not known. One of the best is in the National Gallery, London (see fig. 1), and Maclaren/Brown, loc.cit., list ten versions, including the present work, of which seven are specifically dated 12 October. All exhibit slight variations in the staffage and detail but the composition remains essentially the same. The viewpoint is from behind the former powder magazine, now a pool of water in the right foreground, and shows, from left to right, the Nieuwe Kerk, the Town Hall, the Oude Kerk and the Sint Joris chapel, in the background. The known versions, despite all being dated 1654, were presumably executed over a number of years following the event; the high level of finish in the present work and its close affinities with the National Gallery picture would indicate that like this, both were painted soon after the explosion. Charles Auguste, later duc de Morny, was the son of Hortense de Beauharnais and Charles-Joseph, comte de Flahaut, and thus half-brother to Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, later the Emperor Napoleon III. He was brought up by his paternal grandmother Madame de Souza (1761-1836), who owned a fine collection of paintings, and from her he inherited his love of art. In 1837 he abandoned his military career and in 1842 entered politics, becoming deputy for Clermont-Ferrard. At the same time he became an avid collector of paintings. During the 1840s he was frequently forced to sell large portions of his collection in order to finance his business speculations. There were five such sales between 1841 and 1848 including the 'Duval' sale in which the present picture was offered. That sale was made up entirely of the collection of Fran‡ois Duval, which Morny had acquired en bloc less than a year before. Amongst other paintings from the same sale was Jan van der Heyden's View of the Westerkerk, Amsterdam (bought in), and Watteau's Gilles and his Family (sold 200 gns.), both in the Wallace collection, London. In 1854 de Morny was appointed Pr‚sident of the Corps Legislatif and his pictures were transferred to the Presidential residence at the H“tel de Lassay. He was sent to Russia in 1856, as Special Emissary to Tsar Alexander II, where he added to his collection, most notably with Rembrandt's Rape of Europa, in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and a Head of a Girl by Greuze in the Mus‚e Jacquemart-Andr‚, Paris. The sale held after his death in 1865 lasted eleven days and included such masterpieces as Rembrandt's Portrait of Herman Doomer, in the Metropolitan Mueum, New York; Chardin's Lady with a Bird-Organ, and The Wool Winder, by Greuze, both in the Frick Collection, New York; and The Swing and The Souvenir by Fragonard, both in the Wallace Collection, London. The Winckler collection, mentioned under provenance in the 'Duval' catalogue, probably refers to the Leipzig banker and collector Gottfried Winckler. The picture may well have been in the sale in which the majority of his pictures were dispersed, which took place in Leipzig between 18-20 October 1819, but there do not appear to be any surviving copies of the catalogue. More pictures were sold by his son in Leipzig, on 23 April 1834 but the present work was not amongst them.
