Egbert van der Poel (1621 - 1664)

Egbert van der Poel (Delft, 1621-Rotterdam, 1664)

Village on fire

Oil on panel, cm 51 x 71 

With frame, cm 62 x 83

Published in RKD

Egbert van der Poel was born in Delft in 1621. He joined the St. Luke's Guild in Delft from 1650 and was influenced by artists such as Hendrick Sorgh, Hendrik Potuyl, but above all Saftleven, who inspired him to create landscapes and interiors; his most famous works of this type include The Farmhouse and The Farm, both in the Louvre in Paris, and The Rustic Interior in the Royal Museums of Belgium in Brussels. Market views are also among the most common motifs in the artist’s production: an example of this is the Fish Market of 1650 in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. On October 12, 1654, Van der Poel witnessed the explosion of the Delft powder magazine, which he documented with several views of the state of the city after the disaster; these paintings can be found in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery in London, the Louvre in Paris, the Museum of Nantes and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Van der Poel's interpretation of the theme proved to be particularly successful, as evidenced by the numerous engravings produced in the Flemish region as early as the second half of the seventeenth century: One of the most famous is certainly that of Hendrick the Winter, which can be placed around the sixties of the seventeenth century. He settled in Rotterdam in 1655 and further exploited the theme of the Delft fire, turning it into a genuine genre subject that inspired other painters such as his brother Adriaen and Daniel Vosmar.

He made several copies of the fire subject and thus magnified the phenomenon of his visual happiness a few years after its execution. There are numerous depictions of fires that can be attributed to Van der Poel's brush: This variant bears many similarities to the two currently on display at the Musée du Louvre, Fire in the Village, dated around 1660, and Burning Village of the next year. (invv. RF2884; MNR733). The theme is also treated by the Dutch artist in the work Fire in the Village at Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

In this version of the burning village, the bright yellow and red tones of the flames stand in stark contrast to the dark nocturnal black in which the scene takes place. The hectic movements of the fleeing peasants and citizens are visible in the glow of the fire, as are the profiles of typical Flemish houses.