A View of the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft

About the Artwork

Johannes Huibert Prins made small-scale works on paper such as this drawing featuring scenes of Dutch cities and the people who inhabited them going about their everyday lives. In this drawing, the large Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) in the city of Delft is shown from the side, while a matron fills a bucket for washing from the canal and laborers and other urban inhabitants cross the bridge beyond. Prins's technique, based on that of the artist Jan van der Heyden who worked about 100 years earlier, relied on minute detail—down to the mortar between each brick—achieved with astounding control of the ink and wash.

Inscriptions

Brown ink stamp, verso, lower right; Written in pencil on verso: "[illegible]"; Written in brown ink on verso: "A?u de Niewe Kerk le (?) Delft van de agtenzede le zieu/F.H. Prins ad viv del 1793"; Written in pencil on verso: "[illegible/illegible]"

Exhibition history

Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).

Quick Overview

Artist: Johannes Huibert Prins (Dutch, 1757–1806)
Date: 1793
Medium: Brush, point of brush and brown ink and wash with traces of graphite on cream medium-weight wove paper
Dimensions: Image and Sheet: 29.8 x 32.8 cm (11 3/4 x 12 15/16 in.)
Type: Drawing
Classification: Drawing
Department: Drawings
Credit line: Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift
Accession no.: 2020.141

Provenance

with Johan Bosch van Rosenthal, Amsterdam Mr. and Mrs. Joseph P. Keithley, Cleveland, OH March 2, 2020: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.