Cornelis van Cuylenburgh II

In 1815, after the Battle of Waterloo, the Prince of Orange was the hero of the Netherlands. He had commanded Allied troops in the battle and taken a musket ball in the shoulder. Cornelis van Cuylenburgh celebrated him on a canvas nearly two and a half metres wide, now in the Rijksmuseum. The prince, the future King Willem II, stands in a chariot drawn by four white horses and rides through a triumphal arch into a city while the figure of Peace crowns him. Fame and angels with a cornucopia fly overhead.

Van Cuylenburgh was born in Utrecht in 1758, the son of a sculptor also called Cornelis, and was apprenticed to his father in 1770. He built his career in The Hague and later became director of the Hague Drawing Academy. Most of his work was portraiture, from naval officers to Hague families such as the Goudriaans, whose children he painted together, and he also painted scenes of daily life. His son Johannes learned the trade from him. He died in The Hague in 1827.