Allegory on the French Invasion of 1672

In 1672 the Dutch summed up their disaster year in one bitter saying. The people were senseless, the government helpless, and the country beyond saving. Prints and pamphlets poured out that summer, and this small canvas, only 43 centimetres tall, shows two men looking at a sheet with just such an image.

A young man in a broad feathered hat grins out at us as he holds the sheet up. The man beside him, in an embroidered cap, leans in and lifts a hand at what he sees. Van Wijckersloot signed and dated the picture on that very sheet, near its lower edge, so his own name sits inside the scene of defeat. The painting later belonged to a private collection in France, passed through dealers in Paris and Amsterdam in the 1980s, and the Rijksmuseum bought it in 1995.