Johannes Bosboom Dutch, 1817-1891

It appears from the correspondence between Bosboom and Jan Kruseman that Bosboom visited Trier in the summer of 1865 together with his wife, the novelist Truitje Bosboom-Toussaint, during an orientation trip of Mrs Bosboom for her historic novel Een verrassing van Hoeij in 1595 which was published in serial form in the Gids. Mrs Bosboom had in fact visited Trier earlier as a preparation for her novel Een kroon voor Karel den Stouten (1842). It is very well possible that this watercolour was painted on the spot in the cathedral of Trier. Two years later Bosboom made a painting with the same subject, which was exhibited at the Tentoonstelling van de Levende Meesters in Rotterdam. In the literature, this piece was known by its nickname Kleine Trier (now in the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio). In 1875, Bosboom made a replica of it, now in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (legacy of Van Randwijk 1914).

In 1871, he made another variation on this theme, which is the so-called Grote Trier and is now part of the collection of the Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede. The Grote Trier is a view of a church interior with a large epitaph on the right hand side. The Kleine Trier is just like the watercolour a view of a church interior with on the left hand side the Romanesque memorial stone and on the right hand side the archway. The positioning of the figures in the watercolour resembles the piece from Toledo (1867) the most. The piece in the Rijksmuseum is less detailed and could be seen as a later, simplified version. Considering these differences, it is most likely that the watercolour and the version from Toledo, also taking the later date and stylistic resemblances into account, are most similar.