Jan Anthonie Langendijk (Rotterdam 1780 – 1818 Amsterdam)

Soldiers and Townspeople in a Village

Village Fair with a Dentist Drawing a Tooth

Both pencil, watercolour, black ink framing lines, 241 x 332 mm (9.5 x 13.1 inch)

One signed ‘J.A. Langendijk Dz’ (pen and brown ink, lower left)

Provenance
Private collection, USA; private collection, The Netherlands

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Jan Anthonie Langendijk, together with his father Dirk (1748–1805), are regarded as the most reliable and important painters of military scenes from the French Revolutionary and Napolonic Wars.¹ Their stilistic characteristics are extremely similar, they had a virtually identical ‘hand’, although Dirk is generally considered the more accomplished draughtsman.² It is known that Jan Anthonie completed a number of unfinished paintings by his father after the latter’s death in 1805. Jan Anthonie was taught by his father, and lived in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Brussels and The Hague, finally settling in Amsterdam. He married Johanna Catharina van Everen in 1809, after having co-habitated with her for some time.

Jan Anthonie and Dirk are most famous for their work ad vivum, drawn ‘from the life’, of the French armies entering the Dutch Republic in 1794, and the resulting wars. Father and son followed the armies and the major battles, resulting in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 during which Napoleon was defeated, and executed many very lively battle scenes. Jan Anthonie depicted many of the key historical events of his day, such as the entry of Louis Napoleon in Amsterdam on 20 April 1808 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

This pair of superb drawings by Jan Anthonie Langendijk gives an amusing insight into the daily life and leisure time of soldiers of the early nineteenth century. The wooden village buildings are distinctive of the area north of Amsterdam, particularly the Zaanstreek, known as ‘Zaanse houtbouw’. Both drawings are populated with an array of interesting and amusing figures, street merchants selling their wares, a dentist performing his art with spectators on-looking and cheering, while officers watch from a balcony, and elegant townspeople promenading.

Our colourful and amusing drawings can for instance be compared to Langendijk’s imporant drawing Entry of Louis Napoleon into Amsterdam of 1808 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (fig.).³ King George IV collected a large group of some five hundred drawings and watercolours by Dirk and Jan Antonie Langendijk, still preserved in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.⁴ Because his work was so favoured by contemporary collectors such as the English monarch, few of Jan Anthonie’s works are available on the market now.

1. For the artist, see H.C. Hazewinkel, ‘Dirk en Jan Anthonie Langendijk en Christoffel Meijer’, Rotterdams Jaarboekje 1955, pp. 121-42; J. Hilkhuijsen, ‘J.A.Langendijk (1780-1818), Bloemen kopende infanterist,1816’, Armamentaria 2005/06, no. 40, pp. 242-44.
2. For Dirk Langendijk, see: M.E. Deelen et al., Dirk Langendijk (1748-1805): tekenaar tussen kruitdamp en vaderlands gevoel, Rotterdam 1982.
3. Pen and brown ink, watercolour, graphite, 335 x 444 mm, inv. no. RP-T-00-2246. 
4. See A.E. Haswell Miller and N.P. Dawnay, Military Drawings and Paintings in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London 1970, nos 1239 ff.