About ‘Orange party c. 1890, Jac van Looij’
Orange party ca. 1890, Jac van Looij, 1890 - 1892
Orange party is a painting by Dutch writer-artist Jacobus van Looy, painted in 1890-1892. It is a personal impression of a Dutch folk festival, by night.
Oranjefeest shows a vague impression of a dancing mob of costumed Amsterdam revellers, by night, in the street, complete with lanterns and fireworks. It is a momentary impression, steeped in emotion, verging on disgust, but without moral condemnation. There is something animalistic about the tangle of instinctively moving bodies and the head with the gaping mouth at the centre. Outlines of people and things shimmer away. "The bustle is well in," Van Looy himself wrote. The painting can therefore be seen less as an observation and registration of a popular festivity, as the personal portrayal of an individual ecstatic experience. On 13 April 1887, Amsterdam celebrated the so-called Orange Festival in honour of King Willem III's birthday. After first spending time with some friends from the Tachtigers movement, Van Looy, in his own writing, wandered "restlessly" through the nocturnal capital. "The poor celebrated that monstrous party in the working-class neighbourhoods, 'Tis a troop of drunken bitches wearing orange knickers, poor man's knickers, or if you like whore's knickers, dyed orange in a pot boiling
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