‘Farmers cheaters’

Bilderdijk was very good at drawing trompe-l'oeil scenes, known in Dutch as ‘farmers cheaters’. Through the artful use of light and shadow, the depicted objects in this genre give the impression of being real.

Both the farmers cheater with the goat (1771?) and the one with ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’ (1789) create the optical illusion of a series of documents that are skewed next to or half over each other on the table. The farmers cheater with the goat demonstrates Bilderdijk's erudition: the goat (in Greek: ‘tragos’) possibly refers to Greek tragedy, and there are references to French, Latin and Ancient Greek authors. The farmers cheater bears the date 1771, but Bilderdijk possibly predated the work; it was probably not made by a fifteen-year-old but by a grown man, who also wanted to deceive the viewer in this respect, and who, at the same time, wanted to convince the world of his talents. Undoubtedly, there is a veiled connection between the various texts and images, but the significance of the ensemble unfortunately remains unexplained to this day.

The farmers cheater with ‘Sic transit gloria mundi’ (‘That's how the world's glory goes’) contains several veiled references that have been resolved now. The female figure on the left, for example, depicts the biblical Rebecca, a reference to Bilderdijk's first wife Catharina Rebecca Woesthoven. The print would have been intended to soften Catherine's grief over the loss of her fourth child.