Fire, from The Four Elements

Description

Jan van de Velde, the most prolific printmaker of Haarlem in the early seventeenth century, mainly reproduced the designs of other artists, including Willem Buytewech. The latter was one of the most original and creative Dutch artists of the early seventeenth century. In his suite depicting the four elements—earth, water, fire, and air—Buytewech transformed the traditional manner of representing an element by a single large, symbolic figure. Instead he depicted many figures realistically engaged in activities relating to earth, water, fire, or air. Buytewech’s preparatory drawing for fire, a scene of firing cannons, was set in the daytime. Van de Velde transformed Buytewech’s design into a nocturnal scene, using the darkness of night as a foil for the firing cannons’ fleeting light, which brightly illuminates the surrounding figures.
Gallery label text, collections gallery, by Curator Annette Dixon, February, 2000