No Old Dutch Painter from the 17th century –or any other century before the twentieth– could have created a painting like this!
For a host of reasons.
Nothing even remotely resembling what can be seen here under that cloud cover existed yet. Those colossal high-voltage pylons, which are dwarfed by the overwhelming number of even bigger windmills, were obviously not there, but that also applies to all the land that can be seen here. The water is also spectacularly artificial. And then I am not even talking about that – in my opinion very appropriate here – high point of view.
This is a special part of the Ketelmeer that is located between the large land acquisitions ‘Noord-Oostpolder‘ and ‘Oostelijk Flevoland. Captured from the Zuiderzee, after it had first been turned into the IJsselmeer (‘meer’ means ‘lake’).
The location of Schiphol
In the 17th century no ‘polder’ of any significance was created yet. The first of those was not won from sea but from (dangerous) lakes. Actually the first plans to make a first, really huge Polder were made in the 17th century!
And you cannot make this up: A truly beautiful story about how large-scale reclamation started in the Netherlands can be found on a website dedicated to visual arts!
This is a painting by Adriaen van de Velde showing people playing some precursor of icehockey on a place were today airplanes arrive! (At the bottom of this post I include an old geographical drawing of the area between Amsterdam and Leiden).
The first time I saw this special part of the Ketelmeer with my own eyes was when my KLM plane started to land at Schiphol Airport. And even more remarkable: I had never before heard of the extraordinary, lowered, perfectly circular, artificial lake within the artificial island of IJsseloog, within the artificial Ketelmeer, within the former Zuiderzee.
A bit embarrassing for someone my age even. But my sense of shame diminished when I discovered that a search for the term ‘IJsseloog’ on the own website of the illustrious Dutch Rijkswaterstaat did not yield any results…
