Stadsgezicht met een brug over een kanaal c. 1828 - 1897

Adrianus Eversen made this pencil drawing of a cityscape with a canal and bridge sometime in the 19th century. Eversen was a Dutch painter known for his cityscapes, often depicting scenes of daily life in Dutch towns and cities. This sketch gives us a glimpse into Eversen's working method. As an artist trained in the Dutch tradition, Eversen was part of a network of art academies, dealers and collectors. There are numerical annotations dotted around the sketch which seem to be notes relating to light and shade in the composition. These are visual codes to assist Eversen when developing the sketch into a finished painting. This was typical of the institutionalised Dutch painting method. We can only speculate about how the final painting would look. It is likely that the finished painting would have been less progressive than the sketch itself. To understand this work more fully, it is useful to examine the art market of the Netherlands in the 1800s, which would have shaped and influenced the imagery and output of artists like Eversen. Without that context, we can only see half the picture.