A View of the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft

1793

A View of the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft, 1793. Johannes Huibert Prins (Dutch, 1757–1806). Brush, point of brush and brown ink and wash with traces of graphite on cream medium-weight wove paper; image and sheet: 29.8 x 32.8 cm (11 3/4 x 12 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift 2020.141 Johannes Huibert Prins made small-scale works on paper such as this drawing featuring scenes of Dutch cities and the people who inhabited them going about their everyday lives. In this drawing, the large Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) in the city of Delft is shown from the side, while a matron fills a bucket for washing from the canal and laborers and other urban inhabitants cross the bridge beyond. Prins's technique, based on that of the artist Jan van der Heyden who worked about 100 years earlier, relied on minute detail—down to the mortar between each brick—achieved with astounding control of the ink and wash. On the bridge a laborer pushes a heavy parcel on a wheelbarrow aided by a woman who pushes him from behind.