Plan van de slag bij Waterloo, 1815 1834 - 1856

Curator: I'm immediately drawn to the ordered chaos of it all, you know? All these lines and blocks, standing in for something truly brutal. Editor: Indeed. Here we have an engraving dating from between 1834 and 1856 by T.Z. Keikes, a "Plan van de slag bij Waterloo, 1815," housed right here at the Rijksmuseum. What’s particularly compelling here is its formal nature—it renders an immense historical event into the precise language of cartography. Curator: Cartography, right. But it’s more than a map, isn't it? The pastel palette somehow softens the image. Yet I keep imagining the screams, the smoke, the… Well, the utter disaster of war made neat and tidy. Editor: Precisely. The ordered lines belie the profound disorder and human cost of the event itself. The work highlights the tendency to sanitize history through formal representations, turning something immediate and corporeal into abstract blocks on a field. The choice to display battle as landscape almost neutralizes the image, wouldn’t you say? Curator: Perhaps… but doesn't every representation, even the most visceral, create distance? This one just embraces that distance openly. Look at how delicately the artist captured each of those tiny forests that became silent witnesses of what happened in this field... In its own way, it's trying to digest and present some meaning to an unfathomable event. Editor: Well, the print circulated in an era grappling with the aftermath of revolution and empire. The public dissemination of imagery was often used to reconstruct narratives around battles that changed the political landscape, no pun intended, so I see this print more as a piece of historical rhetoric, designed to elicit particular feeling. Curator: Perhaps... Anyway, looking at it like this is giving me the chills, I will head somewhere else now. Editor: It does invite contemplation on the role of art in framing our understanding of historical conflicts. Something to consider as we continue our visit today.