Lot 1358 Dα

Petrus van Schendel was already famed among his contemporaries for his works depicting nighttime scenes. These compositions all focussed on lighting effects as their principal component - moonlight, oil lamps, torches, candles, gas lights, and petroleum. The present work, depicting the winter festival in the zoological gardens in Brussels, was painted towards the end of the artist's career, in around 1869/1870. He described the composition in his inventory of 1869 as follows: “You see Bengal fires, but mainly electric light.”
The final version of this painting no longer exists. The present work is an oil sketch for it, apparently made shortly before. It depicts the crowds at the winter festival, the moon in the night sky, and various small lights and fires, but the electric light on the left side of the image provides the main source of illumination. Petrus van Schendel appears to have still been working on the completion of his painting in 1870, as in April of that year the artist requested for the Zoological gardens to be illuminated with electric light again so that he could study the light effects one more time.