David Bles' schilderij met schakers

The history is traced and the meaning interpreted of a painting showing chess-players in an eighteenth century coffeehouse; a French officer has lost the game from a Dutchman. It was painted by David Bles in 1876 for the Amsterdam collector Jacob Ankersmit and is now in the possession of Ankersmit's Textile Mills, Deventer. With reference to a note on a preparatory drawing in the Amsterdam Print Room and two certificates written by Bles and pasted on the back of the panel it is shown that Bles did not have in mind a historical event but rather intended to ridicule the Dutch patriot, who considers himself a conqueror merely by checkmating a Frenchman in a tavern. Bles must have found both subject and composition in Boilly's oeuvre. He probably saw Boilly's 'Partie de dames au café Lamblin' (Chantilly) at the Palais Royal in Paris in 1841 or knew it from Bellay's lithograph. The billiard player in the background shows affinity with a painting by Boilly formerly in the Youssoupoff collection and published as a lithograph in 1828. It is known from the catalogue of his estate that Bles had a large collection of French prints. The painting is a document testifying to the great influence of French eighteenth century art on Dutch painting of romanticism.