230
a known 1836 Dutch residents.
13
But many centuries before that, in mid-November
1421, Dordrecht became “an urban island,” as dozens of villages were washed away
and 10,000 or more people killed (“early accounts tell of one hundred thousand
deaths”). Ten thousand or 100,000, it was “a maritime apocalypse” that van Goyen
and everyone around him would have heard about since their childhood. Indeed,
writes Simon Schama, “hydraulic needs” engendered a “moral geography” that was
embedded in the geopolitics, local tax schemes, and the very message of redemption in Church. And thus, one could “describe Dutch society as having a diluvian
personality…this semiaquatic existence….”
14
Little wonder that the first major work, graphically illustrated in the annals of
Western hydrology, was published in Amsterdam in 1678 by Johannes Herbinius,
with its famed frontispiece depicting a naked goddess riding a sea monster into a
waterfall, as well as illustrations of a Scandinavian Charybdis, and a map following
the four wild rivers into paradise. This was the transcendental imagination of the
Netherlands which would produce a van Goyen, a Vermeer, a Ter Borg, each of
whom painted transformational portraits, of landscapes, interiors, faces, and, in the
case of Rembrandt, of oneself succumbing to the powers and visual artifacts of old
age, of nature.
15
In the realm of Dutch ornithology, observations of rare birds have occurred most
frequently along the coastlines of Holland. Those provinces with the longest shorelines—the ones that have held out against continued lashings by storms and accompanying saltwater intrusions—have witnessed the most numerous avifauna
sightings, a trend that has only accelerated in direct correspondence with climate
change, and in a country of which more than half lumbers beneath sea level.
Moreover, the Netherlands presently possesses only some 50% of the coastlines it
had prior to the “large-scale dam construction programme” following the 1953
disaster.
16
A catastrophe that recalls the observations by that astute Italian novelist, traveler, and poet Edmondo De Amicas (1846–1908), whose two-volume work Holland
(1894) juxtaposes the profound stillness and silence of canals and streets and buildings and trees throughout the Hague, with his observations outside the city, at
Scheveningen. It was there, along the North Sea, about which Amicas described the
13 “Today in Dutch history: the 1953 North Sea flooding disaster,” by Thomas Lundberg, I Am
Expat, January 31, 2016, https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/today-dutch-history-1953-north-sea-flooding-disaster, Accessed April 25, 2019.
14 Simon Schama’s The Embarrassment of Riches—An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the
Golden Age, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1987, pp. 34–44.
15 See Dissertationes de admirandis mundi cataractis supra & subterraneis, earumque principio,
elementorum circulatione, ubi eadem occasione aestus maris reflui, vera ac genuina causa asseritur, nec non terrestri ac primigenie paradiso locus situsque verus Palaestina restituitur, in tabula
chorgraphoca ostenditur, & contra utopios, indianos, mesoppotamios, aliosque afferitux, published by Jansson—Waesberghe Amsterdam.
16 See Zeldzame vogels van Nederland met vermelding van alle soorten—Rare birds of the
Netherlands, with complete list of all species, by Arnoud B van den Berg and Cecilia A W Bosman,
GMB Uitgeverij, Utrecht, and Pica press, East Sussex, 1999, pp. 7–8.
24 Jan van Goyen’s Exquisite Obsession
a known 1836 Dutch residents.
13
But many centuries before that, in mid-November
1421, Dordrecht became “an urban island,” as dozens of villages were washed away
and 10,000 or more people killed (“early accounts tell of one hundred thousand
deaths”). Ten thousand or 100,000, it was “a maritime apocalypse” that van Goyen
and everyone around him would have heard about since their childhood. Indeed,
writes Simon Schama, “hydraulic needs” engendered a “moral geography” that was
embedded in the geopolitics, local tax schemes, and the very message of redemption in Church. And thus, one could “describe Dutch society as having a diluvian
personality…this semiaquatic existence….”
14
Little wonder that the first major work, graphically illustrated in the annals of
Western hydrology, was published in Amsterdam in 1678 by Johannes Herbinius,
with its famed frontispiece depicting a naked goddess riding a sea monster into a
waterfall, as well as illustrations of a Scandinavian Charybdis, and a map following
the four wild rivers into paradise. This was the transcendental imagination of the
Netherlands which would produce a van Goyen, a Vermeer, a Ter Borg, each of
whom painted transformational portraits, of landscapes, interiors, faces, and, in the
case of Rembrandt, of oneself succumbing to the powers and visual artifacts of old
age, of nature.
15
In the realm of Dutch ornithology, observations of rare birds have occurred most
frequently along the coastlines of Holland. Those provinces with the longest shorelines—the ones that have held out against continued lashings by storms and accompanying saltwater intrusions—have witnessed the most numerous avifauna
sightings, a trend that has only accelerated in direct correspondence with climate
change, and in a country of which more than half lumbers beneath sea level.
Moreover, the Netherlands presently possesses only some 50% of the coastlines it
had prior to the “large-scale dam construction programme” following the 1953
disaster.
16
A catastrophe that recalls the observations by that astute Italian novelist, traveler, and poet Edmondo De Amicas (1846–1908), whose two-volume work Holland
(1894) juxtaposes the profound stillness and silence of canals and streets and buildings and trees throughout the Hague, with his observations outside the city, at
Scheveningen. It was there, along the North Sea, about which Amicas described the
13 “Today in Dutch history: the 1953 North Sea flooding disaster,” by Thomas Lundberg, I Am
Expat, January 31, 2016, https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/today-dutch-history-1953-north-sea-flooding-disaster, Accessed April 25, 2019.
14 Simon Schama’s The Embarrassment of Riches—An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the
Golden Age, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1987, pp. 34–44.
15 See Dissertationes de admirandis mundi cataractis supra & subterraneis, earumque principio,
elementorum circulatione, ubi eadem occasione aestus maris reflui, vera ac genuina causa asseritur, nec non terrestri ac primigenie paradiso locus situsque verus Palaestina restituitur, in tabula
chorgraphoca ostenditur, & contra utopios, indianos, mesoppotamios, aliosque afferitux, published by Jansson—Waesberghe Amsterdam.
16 See Zeldzame vogels van Nederland met vermelding van alle soorten—Rare birds of the
Netherlands, with complete list of all species, by Arnoud B van den Berg and Cecilia A W Bosman,
GMB Uitgeverij, Utrecht, and Pica press, East Sussex, 1999, pp. 7–8.
24 Jan van Goyen’s Exquisite Obsession