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Bert Hermans
"That's how the Land Lion wins..."
Oil on canvas
60 x 80 cm

Bert made this painting after a visit to the Cruquius museum on February 26, 2022. The painting shows the enormous steam engine of the pumping station.
The De Cruquius pumping station from 1849 is one of the three pumping stations used to drain the Haarlemmermeer between 1849 and 1852. It is the largest steam engine in the world. The pumping station was never modernized after that and was put out of operation in 1933. It belongs to the Top 100 of Dutch national monuments. It is named after the Dutch hydraulic engineer Nicolaus Samuelis Cruquius (1678 – 1754) who made a plan for the reclamation of the Haarlemmermeer. That plan was not carried out during his lifetime.
The Cruquius was built in a neo-Gothic style with typical elements, such as battlements, heavy buttresses, pointed arches and richly ornamented tracery. Neo-Gothic elements can also be found inside, such as decorated cast-iron stairs and pillars. Of the three original pumping stations, only De Cruquius has largely been preserved in its original state. The English engineers Gibbs and Dean designed the steam engine. Parts of the machines of the three pumping stations (steam engine, balance arms, pumps) were built at companies in Cornwall and in Amsterdam.
The engine room (shown here) from 1849 is still present. It houses the world's largest and best-preserved steam engine, the Cornish Engine with a cylinder of 3.66 meters in diameter. This machine drives eight balance arms, each weighing 10,000 kilos, which protrude from the round brick construction like tentacles. Pistons are attached to these arms that act as a water pump. Together, with each stroke of the steam engine, they lifted 64,000 liters of water to the wooden pouring floor more than five meters higher around the engine room. The water then flowed through locks on both sides of the boiler house into the ring canal.
The Cruquius is included in the European Route for Industrial Heritage.
The title of the painting 'That's how the Land Lion wins..' refers to Vondel's saying from the poem 'Aenden Leeuw van Hollant', which can also be found in the engine room (here in the background in the painting). In 1641, Joost van den Vondel's poem called on the Dutch authorities to implement the plan to drain the Haarlemmermeer: "Thus the Land lion gains Land, so he purifies gold from foam".