A Wooded Landscape Near Beekhuizen 1800 - 1870

Andreas Schelfhout made this watercolor drawing of a wooded landscape near Beekhuizen, in the Netherlands, sometime in the first half of the 19th century. It presents a seemingly neutral scene, and the artist was a well-respected member of the Royal Academy in Amsterdam. But the very act of painting landscapes at this time had a social meaning. The Netherlands had been under French rule until 1815, and the post-Napoleonic period saw a surge of interest in establishing a distinct national identity. Romanticism and its focus on the local and the particular was a widespread cultural phenomenon, and landscape painting became popular as a way of valorizing the local terrain. Schelfhout was a master of winter scenes, and there may be a connection between this interest in landscape and the severe winter of 1813, which led to the collapse of French rule in the Netherlands. Art historians use sources such as exhibition reviews and artists’ correspondence to understand how artworks like this one participated in the political and social debates of their time.