Notes

This painting was made at the occasion of a great feast for Leopold the First of Belgium in Brussels in 1848. Bosboom was one of the painters invited by the Cèrcle Artistique et Littéraire to create his own interpretation of an admired painting of the 17^th century. His choice was a church interior by Pieter de Witte (1568 – 1651). The corridors of the palace where the feast was held were hung with these paintings and they were also published in 1849 in a very elaborate book with lithographs made of the paintings and dedicated to the King.

Johannes Bosboom (1817-1891) is considered the most important painter of church interiors in the 19th century.

Johannes Bosboom proved to have a great drawing talent at a young age and at the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to the painter of cityscapes Bart van Hove. That same year, Johannes Bosboom also became a student at the Hague Drawing Academy.

With his impressionistic approach, Bosboom stood at the cradle of developments that would lead to the Hague School. The fact that the work of his seventeenth-century predecessors was never entirely his thoughts is evident from the clothing from the Golden Age that the figures wear in almost all of his depictions.

Johannes Bosboom acquired a great international reputation as a painter and watercolorist of church interiors. His colleagues regarded him as an authority, not only because of his talent but also because of his commitment to the artists.

Many museums in the Netherlands and abroad own work by this painter.