Hodges portrait

The best-known (and most beautiful) portrait of Bilderdijk was made in 1810 by the painter Charles Howard Hodges, who had previously portrayed Catharina Rebecca Woesthoven. Hodges was an Englishman, but he moved to the Dutch Republic around 1790. He portrayed numerous celebrities, including successive heads of state Willem V, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, Lodewijk Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte and Willem I. Bilderdijk was very satisfied with the painting, perhaps partly because he was now placed in this list of big names:

If Fate wants, that in later days My name may keep itself in the unwise Fatherland, And some image must transmit my body, Then it is sketched by your gifted hand.

Hodges' portrait presented Bilderdijk as he himself liked it: as a sensitive, melancholic poet elevated above ordinary people. Leaning on his arm, he looks sadly ahead. In addition to the work of Homer and Ossian on the table is also the manuscript of his unfinished work De ondergang der eerste wareld (The downfall of the first world).

The painting in the Bilderdijk room is not the original, but a copy made by the Dutch painter Moritz Calisch, mid-nineteenth century. The original is in possession of the Rijksmuseum and a copy made by Hodges himself is in the Trippenhuis, both in Amsterdam.