Hendrik Hoogers (1747-1814) Animated Landscape

Hendrik Hoogers (1747-1814) Animated landscape, 1771, wash and pencil, 25 x 19 cm, signed and dated 1771 lower left.

Hendrik Hoogers (1747-1814) was a Dutch draftsman and copperplate engraver, best known for his depictions of Nijmegen and for the series of engravings “Memorie of Valkhof Castle”. He also served as mayor of the city of Nijmegen.
Hendrik Hoogers was baptized in Nijmegen on March 26, 1747. His father was a tanner, training which Hendrik also followed. He was attracted to drawing, poetry and music from a very young age, but did not consider these activities as a means of livelihood.
He met Hermyna Tack from Amsterdam around 1771. His first known works date from that year, notably the famous depiction of St. Stephen's Tower in Nijmegen. In 1772, Hendrik married Hermyna and in 1773 the first of their three children was born.
These were the early years of neoclassicism in art and the period of creation of art academies and drawing schools in Europe. One of these is the Maatschappij Felix Meritis in Amsterdam, founded in 1788, and of which Hoogers is a member. It is also the period of return to nature, as propagated by the French writer Jean Jacques Rousseau. In painting, this gave rise to a group of topographers, which also included Hendrik Hoogers, who strived to represent the landscapes of their immediate surroundings accurately, but in a romanticized form, with a preference for ruins and couples lovers, children playing or peddlers in the landscape.
In 1779, Hoogers lost his wife. He looked for a new mother for his children and remarried in 1781 to Cornelia van Ommeren from Wageningen.
Hoogers is also politically active in his city. He is a convinced patriot. In 1794, Nijmegen capitulated without resistance to the French revolutionaries and the existing magistrates gave way to the Patriots. Hoogers actively interfered in the administrative reforms implemented by the Batavian Republic. Hoogers' political actions led to his appointment as mayor of Nijmegen in 1805; he was reappointed in 1806. After his two-year term as mayor, Mr. Hoogers remained a municipal councilor until the end of his life.
In 1796, the Regional Assembly decided to demolish Valkhof Castle. Hoogers resisted unsuccessfully, but this gave him the impetus for his masterful series of prints from memories of Valkhof Castle.
After his two years as mayor, Hoogers had poor health for several years. But in the years 1809-1811, he produced another series of drawings, notably of the Valkhof chapel and the Belvedere chapel in Nijmegen. Of note is a drawing depicting elderly people walking in Valkhof Park, which was developed during his tenure as mayor. No works of art by his hand are known from the years after 1811.

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