Rijksmuseum Art & Vergenoegd Löw
JAN BRANDES
Jan Brandes (1743 – 1808) was a Dutch Lutheran minister and artist, in the service of the Dutch East India Company. He visited Vergenoegd from May 1786 to March 1787, when he was hosted by owner of the time, Johan Georg Lochner. Before coming to the Cape, he had lived and preached in the Dutch East Indies (Batavia/Jakarta and Ceylon/Sri Lanka).
Jan Brandes
(1743 – 1808)
He proved a remarkable draughtsman with a fine ability to capture vignettes of daily life wherever he found himself. His panoramas of the Vergenoegd farm proved invaluable to the recent architectural restoration team. He has also given us an insight into what people looked like and did at that time.
During his career, he produced many drawings and watercolours of buildings, landscapes, flora, fauna and fish. As he had finally moved to Sweden, his sketch books remained in his family there for almost two centuries. In 1958 The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam acquired some of his loose sketches in Stockholm. In 1985 the Rijksmuseum obtained two complete sketchbooks containing Brandes’ most important work. These include the work he produced at what is now Vergenoegd Löw.
