A Village on Fire

Leaping out from the canvas, the orange glow of a raging fire creates a dramatic focus in this nocturnal landscape. Delicate brushstrokes shift from burnt yellows, golds and reds into sooty purples and blues, tracing the fleeting tongues of flame and smoke that spread across the canvas and are reflected in the river that divides the landscape. The intense light of the fire throws the foreground into an almost impenetrable shadow, silhouetting the trees against the sky. From the depths of the black gloom, it is possible to seek out the escaping villagers, some with arms raised in alarm, gesticulating to those who have escaped and are wading along the riverbank, their possessions pulled behind them. Although the figures are placed at a safe distance from the flames, their inclusion makes it a palpable experience that would have been thrilling to the contemporary viewer. 

The skill required to render the light and illusion of nocturnal scenes was greatly admired and respected in the seventeenth-century Dutch art market. Painted on a small scale, night scenes such as this, known as ‘nachtjes’ (little night scenes), were popular with the newly affluent Dutch middle classes. Although the artist is unknown, this composition may have been inspired by the works of Aert van der Neer (c.1603-77), a landscape painter based in Amsterdam who witnessed the destruction of the town hall there in a great blaze in 1652. Van der Neer produced several nocturnal paintings based on similar themes, where the effects of colour and light created by a village engulfed in flames play out in the night sky, set in watery landscapes that would have been familiar to Dutch buyers.