Signed and dated J A: Langendyk Dz fecit 1816

Pencil and watercolour, pen and black ink framing lines, laid on a period mount with decorative mount with label inscribed LANGENDYCK and stamp BOUTE ET NE DOUTE REMUSAT

220 x 173 mm. (8 7/8 x 6 in.)

SOLD

The Prince of Wales, later George IV, purchased a large group 351 drawings by Jan Antoine Langendyck. The series of drawings were probably executed as a comprehensive record of the dress of the various armies that had taken part in the Napoleonic Wars, and also as a commercial venture. The military costume prints circulating in Europe at the time would have provided Langendyck with his principal source of information, however the results are, according to Haswell Miller and Dawner, inaccurate and unreliable. There are similar costumes in the drawings at Windsor Castle1. The costumes worn by the women may be from particular regions in the Netherlands. In a similar drawing on the art market the costumes were identified as being from Hindeloopen, Friesland2.

Jan Anthonie, the son of Dirk Langendyck, studied under his father and their work is quite similar. As a young man he went to the West Indies in the Netherlands Navy. He worked in Rotterdam, the Hague, Brussels and Amsterdam.

Our charming watercolour is a characteristic example by this artist and in an excellent condition.

1.C. White and C. Crawley, The Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the Fifteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p.432, nos 618-9, and A.E. Haswell Miller and N.P. Dawney, Military Drawings and Paintings in the Collection of H.M. The Queen, 2 vols, London, 1970, pl.226 (vol.I) and cat.no.1607, p.146 (vol. II).

2.Christies Amsterdam, 15 November 1983, lot 173.