Marken funeral barge

Here, a summer funeral party makes its way to a church in the distance. A widow lies face down on top of the coffin, in accordance with local custom. The mood is evocative, the paintwork sketchy and impressionist. In fact, the work may be unfinished.

Van der Velden based the work on a series of drawings he made in the 1870s on the island of Marken, near Amsterdam. In depicting this funeral, he elevated the death of the humble to a level of grandeur normally reserved for notable individuals.

The emotional subject finds a parallel in Van der Velden’s later New Zealand works, in which he presents humankind as diminutive in the face of natural forces and the inevitable cycle of life and death.