Duinlandschap 1844

Johannes Franciscus Hoppenbrouwers made this watercolor titled ‘Dune Landscape’ in the Netherlands sometime in the mid-19th century. The work seems to participate in the Romantic-era vogue for landscape painting, but with a twist. Rather than grand vistas of mountains or sublime forests, Hoppenbrouwers’ scene depicts a modest dune landscape. We might ask what the social implications are of choosing such a commonplace subject? Was Hoppenbrouwers aligning himself with the rising middle class, whose members did not own grand estates, but merely visited the local dunes for recreation? Was he perhaps reacting against the grandiose Neoclassical history paintings that were popular at the time? To understand this work more fully, we might research the changing social function of landscape painting in 19th-century Dutch society.