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Carel Lodewijk Hansen (1765-1840), figures partly by Jacob Smies (1764-1833)
The Rapenburg, Leiden, after the explosion, 1807. Signed C. L. Hansen and inscribed 't Raapenburg te Leyden zo als het was 15 January 1807. (The Rapenburg in Leiden as it was on January 15, 1807). Canvas, 94.5 × 125.5 cm.

The Netherlands Office for Fine Arts, inv.nr. B 1288 (in the Academiegebouw, university of Leiden). From the Pavilion in Haarlem, as an exhibit in the Rijksmuseum voor Moderne Meesters (State Museum for Living Artists). Painted for King Louis Napoleon, who purchased it for the National Museum in 1808.

On January 12, 1807, a gunpowder barge being tugged routinely through the main canal of Leiden by an inveterately careless crew did what by rights it should have done long before: it blew up, taking a good part of the neighbourhood and many lives with it. Three days later King Louis Napoleon visited the site. Hansen, in a painting made for the king, recorded what he saw during the inspection, probably including the king himself and his entourage in the scene. A drawing by Hansen of the site in the Leiden archives is dated January 13.

The painting was published in a print by F. Diterich, with slight differences in the placing and number of the functionaries.

Hansen's attachment to Louis Napoleon did not prevent him from collaborating on the travelling panorama of the Battle of Waterloo.

Van Eijnden and van der Willigen, vol. 3, p. 113, note 1. Moes and van Biema 1909, pp. 132, 218. Catalogues of the Lakenhal, Leiden, 1949 (nr. 122) and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1976, nr. A 3925.