INFO
View of a square with cafés in Maastricht, with the Sint Janskerk, the Sint Servaaskerk and the Town Hall in the background
Han Jelinger
c. 1948
coloured pen and ink drawing, pencil, pen, watercolour, gouache
h 92 x w 102 x d 3 cm (with frame)
A gift from the South
Take a closer look at this drawing from around 1948 of a Maastricht square, with the towers of Sint Janskerk, Sint Servaas Cathedral, and the Town Hall in the background. It contains so many puns and references that you must see it up close. In the houses on the square are a row of cafés serving the following brands of beer, from left to right: De Drie Hoefijzers, Oranjeboom, Bavaria, ZHB and Amstel. The next three cafés serve Brand, De Leeuw and Gulpener, and inscribed on the large building at the far right is ‘Heineken’s Beers.’
Something is clearly going on at this last café. The terrace is packed and the Maastricht Music Association De Nachtgaal (The Nightingale) plays cheerful music for the festively dressed café-goers.
Our beer is great again
At the front left, two bearers of a barrel of Bavaria angrily walk away. One of them carries a sign that reads ‘OUR (...) BEER IS GREAT AGAIN.’ After the Second World War, the Central Brewery Office used this slogan for all affiliated brewers to indicate that Dutch beer was just as good as before. It had been weak and tasteless for almost the entire war due to a lack of raw materials.
Hospital beer
To the left of the café serving ZHB beer, a nun and a man in a doctor’s coat are loading a body into an ambulance. Behind them, bystanders are carrying another person out. This joke probably refers to the bad reputation of the beer from the Zuid-Holland Beer Brewery, which was nicknamed ‘ZiekenHuisBier ‘ (Hospital Beer) because of its poor quality.
Gifts
In the right foreground is the Gifts Committee: a group of men, three of them in black suits with top hats, donate a bird in a cage, an inkstand, golden candlesticks, a painting, and a clock. In back, a simple servant carries a bunch of flowers in a vase. The driver up front has a band around his cap that reads ‘...EN BREWERY.’ The group is heading for the busy café where Heineken is being served.
Generous givers
From all these details, it is clear that the drawing by the well-known Maastricht artist Han Jelinger (nicknamed ‘The Cardinal’) must have been a gift to Heineken. Who the givers were becomes clear when you turn over the framed drawing. On the back are the names of the Gulpener Brouwerij, De Leeuw in Valkenburg and Brand in Wijlre, with the signatures of their respective directors at the time: Paul Rutten jr., Paul Chambille de Beaumont and Guus Brand.
75 years of Heineken
Neither the drawing nor the frame indicate the occasion at which the three Limburg breweries presented the gift. However, given the period in which the three directors were in charge, it must have been the 75th anniversary of Heineken’s Bierbrouwerij Maatschappij in 1948.