Gate to Utrecht with part of the promenade, 1750

About the Work

In his activities as a draughtsman, the physician and naturalist Jacob van Liender concentrated solely on views of his native Utrecht. Here he depicted one of the town’s architectural monuments – the Wittevrouwenpoort, a city gate that had undergone elaborate expansion in the seventeenth century – in the middle ground. Our gaze wanders across a canal with picturesque reflections on the surface of the water. The building almost seems to be situated in a park among the groups of trees that serve to structure the compositional space.