'Country Lion and Water wolf' Oil on canvas 70 x 60 cm
This painting shows the De Cruquius pumping station. This pumping station is one of the three pumping stations with which the Haarlemmermeer was pumped dry between 1849 and 1852. The Cruquius was built in a neo-Gothic style with typical elements, such as battlements, heavy buttresses, pointed arches and richly ornamented tracery. The Cruquius is included in the European Route for Industrial Heritage. The title of the painting 'Landleeuw and Waterwolf' refers to the poem Aenden Leevw van Hollant (To the lion of Holland) by the Dutch poet Vondel. It was an expression of support for the plans of Jan Adriaanszoon Leeghwater to drain the Haarlemmermeer. Leeghwater called the Haarlemmermeer "water wolf [that] devours and destroys everything that is around there". The nickname waterwolf was well chosen: the enormous Haarlemmermeer, with an area of ????almost 17,000 hectares, conquered more and more land; it devoured the land as a wolf devours its prey. In his poem Vondel also presents the water as a water wolf that attacks the Dutch lion from within. Both animals are depicted in the foreground in the painting. The threatening sky symbolizes the struggle that had to be waged to realize the draining of the Haarlemmermeer. In the end they succeeded and the clear evening sky on the horizon shows this. In Abbenes, a village in the Haarlemmermeerpolder, there is a farm that was given the name Vondel's Landleeuw in 1860 by the poet Jan Pieter Heije. And in Hoofddorp, the main town of the municipality of Haarlemmermeer, on the N201 is a residential area with three streets in which Vondel's poem lives on: Windvorst, Landleeuw and Waterwolf.
