Hanenpoot

This picture book, drawn by Bilderdijk, describes the colorful adventures of the little boy ‘Hanenpoot’, whose real name was Julius Willem, and who was a son of the poet and his girlfriend Katharina Wilhelmina Schweickhardt, born in 1798. The picture book shows that Bilderdijk also had a different side from that of the gloomy hypochondriac, grumbler, social critic and prophet of doom. Here, he is the attentive and humorously observing father.

Although at first glance the drawings seem to depict the little boy's daily life, many of the adventures are fantasized or at least greatly exaggerated. That he catches a whale with his fishing rod, that he floats in the air on his kite or that he almost drowns in the pot; it is all very unlikely. But it once again reinforces the impression of a cheerful comic strip, in which fact and fiction are playfully mixed.