Gezicht op Tanger

About this artwork

Gezicht op de stad Tanger, links op de voorgrond zit een in een cape gehulde man tegen een muur geleund.

Art Historical Context

Petrus Johannes Arendzen’s etching *Gezicht op Tanger* offers an intimate glimpse of Morocco’s coastal city through the eyes of a late-nineteenth-century Dutch printmaker. Created sometime between 1874 and 1909, the small plate (just 186 × 245 mm) depicts Tangier’s clustered rooftops and walls, with a solitary figure wrapped in a cape leaning against a foreground wall. This quiet human presence anchors the sweeping view, inviting viewers to imagine the sounds and light of a North African port that remained exotic to most European audiences of the period. Etching was ideally suited to such topographical subjects. The technique’s fine, flexible lines allowed Arendzen to suggest both architectural detail and atmospheric distance within a compact format, qualities that made prints like this popular for travel books and private collections. Although little is documented about the circumstances of this particular plate, it reflects the era’s growing fascination with Mediterranean and North African scenes, translated through the precise, reproducible language of etching. Today the work serves as a modest yet evocative record of cross-cultural curiosity, preserving the silhouette of Tangier as observed more than a century ago.

About the Artist

Petrus Johannes Arendzen · 1855–1935

Petrus Johannes Arendzen (1846–1932) was a Dutch etcher, draughtsman, and painter who dedicated his career to creating reproductive etchings of Dutch paintings in English collections while living in England from 1873 onward. Born in Amsterdam in 1846, Arendzen married Epiphania, daughter of Johan Stracké, and left his native city to pursue a unique commission from the Dutch Government: to copy the...