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Notes
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Underneath a cloudy sky a number of ships can be seen sailing off what appears to be a strip of the Dutch coast. The monogram ’DW’ signed on a log drifting in the foreground waves of this seascape remains the only hint to the painter’s identity. This ‘monogrammist’ does not seem to have been a very productive or widely known artist, but the small panel marks a point of transition in Dutch marine painting of the first half of the seventeenth century, between the pictorial concepts of earlier artists such as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom and the achievements of the next generation represented by his pupil Jan Porcellis. The beholder’s gaze is drawn into the picture space with the distribution of light and shade as well as the ships’ positions laying out the spatial recession.
Though more colourful than the general style of the tonalist period of the 1630s and 1640s, this composition is very much in line with the work of Porcellis’s followers. This is true not only on a formal level, but also regarding the aspects of the depiction of weather and atmosphere and the embracing of the loosely narrative scene. The three-master seen from port-bow view is curiously depicted from a slightly higher viewpoint, which together with the vessel’s shape suggests a familiarity with the frigates in Vroom’s paintings.
Title
Dutch Ships in a Breeze
Date
c.1650
Medium
oil on panel
Measurements
H 20.5 x W 32.5 cm
Accession number
BHC0737
Work type
Painting
