All works in Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum

Martinus Schouman

The Bombardment of Algiers (26-27 August 1816)

Dordrecht, The Hague, 1823

Object data

oil on canvas

support: height 97.2 cm × width 158.9 cm × thickness 4.9 cm
frame size: depth 13.2 cm

Inscriptions

  • signature and date, lower right: M. Schouman f. 1823

Provenance

Commissioned by the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague;1 transferred to the museum, 1883

Object number: SK-A-1395

Copyright: Public domain

Entry

Painting of ships firing in the night.

In the night of 27 August 1816, a combined Anglo-Dutch fleet of twenty-eight ships under the command of Admiral Edward Pellew, Lord Exmouth (1757-1833) and Vice Admiral Theodorus Frederik van Capellen (1761-1824) bombarded Algiers to back up the ultimatum after previous diplomatic attempts had failed to release more than a thousand Europeans, many of them sailors, who had been enslaved by the Dey of Algiers.2

Martinus Schouman (1770-1848) painted this work in his Dordrecht studio in 1823 as a commission by the Department of the Navy.3

Literature

J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, p. 172; J.C. Mollema, ‘Het bombardement van Algiers, 27 Augustus 1816’, Jaarverslag Vereeniging Nederlandsch Historisch Scheepvaart Museum te Amsterdam 1937, Amsterdam 1938, pp. 55-64; P.J.J. van Thiel et al., All the Paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: A Completely Illustrated Catalogue, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1976, p. 508; C. Northcote Parkinson, Britannia Rules: The Classic Age of Naval History 1793-1815, London 1977; J. Erkelens, ‘Martinus Schouman (1770-1848). Biografie van een Dordtse zeeschilder’, De Negentiende Eeuw 7 (1983), pp. 277-94; A. Lemmers (ed.), Maritime Technology from the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam: Multimedia Catalogue of the Dutch Navy Model Collection 1698-1889, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1995

Citation

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Martinus Schouman, The Bombardment of Algiers (26-27 August 1816), Dordrecht, 1823', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5429

(accessed 23 November 2024 02:49:03).

Footnotes