A Dead City of the Zuider Zee, Holland (The Town of Doorn, North Holland). by George H. Boughton (1834-1905). c.1880. Oil on canvas. H 67 x W 127.8 cm. Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum. Accession number BORGM 00324, acquisition method: a gift from Mrs Auerbach, 1942. Kindly made available by the gallery via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). Kindly made available by the gallery via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). Commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee.
Doorn is a small town on the Zuider Sea in the central Netherlands. Far from continuing to decline after its maritime heyday, it has grown since Boughton's visit, and travel sites reveal that it is on the tourist trail, with various attractions — including the house where Kaiser Wilhelm spent his exile after World War I. But, for Boughton, the touch of pathos about it at this earlier date, the sense of a pretty rural backwater past its best, one of the "the minor dead and dying cities of the Zuider Zee" (viii), must have been irresistible. In his painting, simple peasant life continues far from the bustle of city life. A girl is spreading out washing to dry on the low bank to the left, while some children stand on the other side of the tree-bordered, unmade road. A couple of villagers approach, chatting, and, in the distance, are a range of steep-roofed houses, with a windmill nearby, close to the water. Little sailing ships can be seen on the other side of them, to the right. All is peaceful, harmonious and picturesque. "The vague, excitement-seeking person would perish of ennui very shortly in any of the Dutch 'dead cities,'" remarks Boughton in his account of his visit (164); but he was not one of them. The "air of quietism which spreads ... all over his pictures" is most apparent here (Monkhouse 562).
Bibliography
Boughton, George Henry. Sketching Rambles in Holland. London: Macmillan, 1885. Internet Archive. Contributed by the Getty Research Institute. Web. 30 December 2021.
Monkhouse, Cosmo. "Some English Artists and Their Studios." The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine. Vol. XXIV. Century Company, 1882: 553-68. Internet Archive. Web. 30 December 2021.
Created 30 December 2021