150 years of fire in Amsterdam. 1720-1888.

Fire on the corner with the Kalverstraat. 1720, Abraham Rademaker (1675-1735).

Keizersgracht Theatre Fire of 11 May 1722.

The fire on the stage of the old city theatre, Keizersgracht 384 began at 9pm on Monday 11 May 1772.
This image was made “as I considered it before I fled,” according to draftsman Simon Fokke.

An allegorical depiction of the fire in the old city theater, Keizersgracht 384, on May 11, 1772. Simon Fokke (1712-1784).
A mourning city maiden sits in the ruins with an empty
beehive (the symbol theatre’s symbol), above her
is Apollo presumably on Olympus.

In 1664 it was decided that Amsterdam’s Van Campen was too small and out of date. It had to be replaced by a larger theater building more in tune with the customs and Baroque architecture of the time. This new theater was twice as large as the old, and opened on 26 May 1665. Its first stone had been laid by the youngest daughter of the playwright Jan Vos.

The Amsterdam story writer Jan Wagenaar gives an ample description of this building, mentioning in particular the theatre machinery, through which men could fall through the air or disappear below the stage. Gerard de Lairesse helped decorate the interior.

Just eight years later the building caught fire during a performance on 7 May 1772. One story has it that a theatre servant had carelessly walked round the building with a naked candle taken from the stage lighting, another version that a rope caught fire after a performance. The fire quickly burnt itself out, yet killed 18 people, destroyed 22 houses in the surroundings, and was so large that it could be seen from The Hague, Utrecht and on the island of Texel.

The rubble became valuable due to the gold and the jewels in it, and the site was sold by its owners after the fire.

The Schouwplaats, during the fire van den Schouwburg. There’s panic in the theater, Keizersgracht 384, at the start of the fire.
Theodorus Bogerts, C. Crajenschot, (1745-1817), Pieter Barbiers, (1717-1780). Etching and engraving, colored by hand.

The start of the fire in the old city theater, Keizersgracht 384, seen from the ground floor Description Date of the performance- May 11, 1772. Pieter Barbiers, (1717-1780).

Fire! fire! Assist! bring water or the whole neighborhood is done with!
Woodcut, colored with templates. 1772. Hendrik Numan (1736-1788)
Keizersgracht 378-392, depicted during the fire of the Schouwburg, Keizersgracht 384, on 11 May 1772.

The Schuwburg Theatre Amsterdam on fire on May 11, 1772. Anonymous etching.

Fire in the theatre. 1772. C. Kraeijenschot.
An allegorical representation of the fire in the Schouwburg on 11 May 1772, with the ruin in the background.

Nieuwevaart-Oostenburgergracht. The fire in the sawmill de Grote Leeuw on January 30, 1794. N. Schuckink.

The Eenhoornsluis in the Korte Prinsengracht during the fire of a police post house. B. Kemming, November 5 1813.

Houses in the Bakkersgang after a fire, seen over the water of the Markengracht. J.H. Button, 1800-1825.

22 September 1820 : Ronde Lutherse Nieuwe Kerk at 11 Singel.

The organ in the *Ronde Lutherse Nieuwe Kerk* at 11 Singel before the fire of 1822.
Sketch by HP Schouten, possibly worked up by Gerrit Lamberts.

The Singel and the Round Lutheran Church, between 1675 and 1695. Jacobus Storck (1641 – c.1700).

Round Lutheran Church, Singel 11, during the fire in 1822.
Jacobus van Meurs, (1758-1824) September 18, 1822.

The Ronde Lutherse Nieuwe Kerk (Round Lutheran Church) at 11 Singel was designed by Adriaan Dortsman, (ca. 1636-1682), one of the very best architects the Dutch Golden Age had to offer. The church opened in 1671, and 1822 the church was nearly destroyed by a huge fire in it’s Ronde. By 1826 it had been rebuilt. In 1983 the church was closed for restoration and in 1993 the dome caught fire yet again. The church was restored once more.

“The hungry lion throws itself on the antelope, devours him. . . Birds of prey have each torn a strip of flesh from the poor animal that is shedding a tear! The sun sets.” Henri Rousseau.

Art & Design Nature

Helene Schjerfbeck began as a precociously skilled, slightly melancholic late-19th-century academic realist. She finished as a painter whose sublime abstract images are an exquisite harmony of pure paint and cryptic description.

“I have to draw to the point of madness, just draw. Just work, work and think of nothing else”, said the brilliant Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. It did him no good, he was just another “degenerate” artist to the Nazis.

From hat shop girl to Dutch art icon. But who was the Girl in the Kimono? The opaque story of an 1890s working class teenager immortalised by George Hendrik Breitner.

Descendant of samurai and relentless entrepreneur, Ogawa Kazumasa opened Tokyo’s first photo studio, shot Japan’s art treasures, the 100 prettiest geisha in Tokyo and taught photography to the military. His legacy is these exquisite images of flowers.

L’Estampe Moderne; the 1890s Parisian Art Nouveau “best of” album feat. various international artists. 4 lithographs every month. Just 3₣r 50c an issue.

It’s easy to see how, in the mid 1800s, Paul Gustave Doré “hypnotized the widest public ever captured by a major illustrator”. Even Van Gogh was a fan, he copied Doré shortly before shooting himself.

In the 1890s the Dutch painter, George Hendrik Breitner took nude reference photos for his paintings. In the 1990s they were found.

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach. 1880s free love messiah, naturist, pacifist, vegetarian, sun worshipper and unique symbolist painter.

Found photos : Three lost decades of Iowa Speedway recovered. With Merlin Benning, Lester “Red” Dralle. Claus Stricker, Don & Dick Feckers & Red Droste. 1950>1970.

The Art of Protest: Albert Hahn was righteous anger manifest. A graphic character assassin that even the mighty Germany Kaiser feared.

It’s 1914. and Orientalism meets Art Nouveau and the early stirrings of Art Deco in Emile-Allain Séguy’s “Samarkande: 20 Compositions en couleurs dans le Style oriental”.

The 1920s French Art Deco influencer who drew pure design inspiration from the natural world. Insectes (1929) by Émile-Allain Séguy.

The forgotten Finska Vyer birch bark album, by I.K Inha, 1892. Inside are raw natural landscape photographs of Finland. It won the 1st international photographic competion in Paris.

William Morris. Strawberry Thief . “You can picture my Father going out in the early morning and watching the rascally thrushes at work on the fruit beds…”

The Swiss artist, Ernst Kreidolf (1863-1956). A Princess helped him give up the life of a farmer to put his faith and future in the hands of the flower fairies. He lived magically ever after.

Dope fiends busted. 1950s narcotics crime photography from the archives of L.A. Enquirer.

John Martin’s sister was murdered by a neighbour, one brother was a “perfectly cracked” eccentric philosopher/inventor & the other an insane religious firestarter. Perhaps it’s no surprise John became the ultimate harbinger of The Apocolypse.

Outraged. The 1896 murder of Helen Thomson. Markinch, Fife, Scotland.

Achille Lemot learns the exact price of a mistress in 1870s Paris.

Erland Soderburg. A 1907 matricide. “Then I grabbed a small kitchen knife that was lying on the table. I hacked at her throat, then slashed it and the blood spurted out on me.”

Children of the Runestones. 300 A.D. Sweden.

The Dutch ocean liner Hooft, plagued by rats, burned three times and cursed by a French shipyard that lost 3 ocean liners to fire between 1930-1933.

1800s India. A mystery blue-eyed, pale skinned redhead is painted alongside those of 28 Mughal royals. An anonymous court artist evokes how richly the Indian “1%” lived, in these exquisite and rarely seen paintings.

Found. 3 Untitled works (1974). By an unknown artist working in a daylight atelier in Budapest.

8 mystery photographs from 1908/1910. From within some kind of medical institution or sanitorium somewhere in Eastern Europe. There’s one small clue: The Trendelenburg Position. Maybe.

Painter & early street photographer. The astonishing early street photography that helped George Hendrik Breitner add social realism to his famous paintings of Amsterdam.

India mid-1800s : Dr John Murray, cholera specialist an photographer. He spent 40 years travelling with gear weighing 400 pounds and a servant. His ever so slightly psychedelic negatives made it all worth it.

Samarkand, early 1900s. The first ever colour photographs of the ancient Persian city by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, an unknown Russian who invented his own colour photography process.

It’s 1914. and Orientalism meets Art Nouveau and the early stirrings of Art Deco in Emile-Allain Séguy’s “Samarkande: 20 Compositions en couleurs dans le Style oriental”.

Around the world with the rare travel drawings by the American painter, Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). Found in the archives of the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

150 years of fire in Amsterdam. 1720-1888.

“The hungry lion throws itself on the antelope, devours him. . . Birds of prey have each torn a strip of flesh from the poor animal that is shedding a tear! The sun sets.” Henri Rousseau.