Edward Waverley op een slagveld 1816 - 1889

Johannes de Mare made this print, Edward Waverley on a battlefield, sometime in the 19th century. The print evokes the visual codes of the military and the Scottish Highlands, which are placed here in dialogue. The image shows us Edward Waverley, the main character of a novel by Walter Scott. The historical setting for Scott’s novel was the Jacobite rising of 1745, an attempt to restore the Stuart monarchy. Waverley, an English soldier, becomes sympathetic to the Jacobite cause. De Mare’s image depicts a scene of Waverley on a battlefield, contemplating a pile of dead or dying soldiers. The image points to the romance of war as a cultural phenomenon in the Netherlands in the first half of the 19th century. To understand the cultural significance of this print, we might begin by studying Walter Scott’s influence on Dutch art and literature, as well as the military history of the Netherlands during this period.