Roofoverval op een koets 1706 - 1750

Cornelis Troost’s sketch depicts a chaotic scene: a ‘Roofoverval op een Koets’ or ‘Highway Robbery of a Coach’, created with pen in gray on blue paper. Troost lived in a time when the Dutch Republic was transforming from a major European power to a society increasingly defined by its mercantile activities. Here, the artist offers a vivid snapshot of the social tensions that accompanied this transition. On the one hand, there’s the opulence of the coach, a symbol of wealth and status. On the other, the robbers disrupt this display, enacting a crude form of wealth redistribution through violence. The scene could easily be a moment lifted from The Beggar’s Opera, a ‘ballad opera’ popular at the time, that satirized the upper classes. Through this emotionally charged sketch, Troost confronts us with the raw realities of power, class, and survival in a rapidly changing world. It's a world where the boundaries between legality and criminality, wealth and poverty, are constantly being negotiated, often at the point of a gun.