View of a Netherlandish City, 1790

About the Work

This veduta gives the impression of depicting a specific place. In fact, however, it is a freely invented assemblage of different motifs the artist had collected in his sketchbooks. Prins was influenced by the painted townscapes of the seventeenth century, the Golden Age of Netherlandish art. With seemingly genuine topographies of the kind seen here, he created ideal views of Netherlandish towns. Precisely observed details play as great a role in these scenes as the atmospheric orchestration of the light.