The Water Reservoirs, the so-called Bends, in Belgrade Forest

Cornelis Calkoen, the Dutch ambassador in Istanbul from 1727 to 1744, kept a country house in the Belgrade Forest, the wooded hills north of the city. The bends of the title are dams built across the valleys there to hold water for Istanbul's supply, and Jean Baptiste Vanmour, the painter Calkoen employed, made a view of them.

This canvas is a copy of that view, made later in Dresden, where Calkoen was posted next. He meant to do there what he had done in Istanbul and buy a large number of paintings by a single artist. The Rijksmuseum thinks he had Johann Christian Vollerdt, a Dresden landscape painter, copy the Vanmour as a test of his skill.