The Great Turkish War

The Guerre de Hollande of 1672–1678 had launched Romeyn de Hooghe's career as the Dutch Republic's foremost designer of scenes of siege and battle. It had also made him the principal artist glorifying William iii. He invented, executed, and sometimes published a copious number of broadsheets and book illustrations illuminating William’s military prowess. No artist matched his creativity or originality, or the sheer volume of his output. At first sight, it is therefore puzzling that Romeyn's stream of broadsheets illustrating battles and sieges, and lionizing the stadtholder, ran completely dry after the Peace of Nijmegen. Not until the outbreak of the Great Turkish War in 1683 did Romeyn produce one single battle scene; and neither did he issue any print exalting the stadtholder before the summer of 1688. It would be tempting to relate Romeyn's reticence to his troubled personal life during the late 1670s and his resettlement in Haarlem, but there is a simpler explanation. This was a rare period of peace in Europe, which simply did not provide Romeyn with the occasion to apply his skills as a reporter of battle.

The absence of prints celebrating the Prince of Orange is more perplexing. Romeyn’s only broadsheet during this episode featuring William – albeit among other European leaders – is an almanac sheet for the year 1680 (fig. 3.23). Prominently displaying the allegorical figures of Peace and Justice, and featuring the stadtholder as a champion of peace rather than war, the print was dedicated to the burgomasters of Amsterdam – the very men who had been instrumental in pushing through the Nijmegen peace treaty against William's wishes. By 1678, many Dutchmen, regents as well as the common people, were not only weary of the war, but also increasingly exasperated with William's highhanded methods of government. It is impossible to determine whether Romeyn's caginess during these years was a sign of his own disaffection with the stadtholder or of a generally slack market for Orangist prints, or both. Frederik Muller's catalogue of history prints records only a handful of representations of the stadtholder, made by Romeyn as well as other artists, between the Peace of Nijmegen and the beginnings of the Glorious Revolution in Britain in June 1688.