The Merchant Shipping Anchorage in the Texel with Texel Island and Oude Schild to the North West

By Ludolf Bakhuizen

National Maritime Museum Greenwich

The setting for the picture is the merchant shipping roadstead off the eastern coast of Texel, one of a group of northern islands guarding the entrance to the Zuider Zee. Texel Island can be seen ahead with the village of Oude Schild to the far right. The channel between the islands into the North Sea is on the horizon beyond the merchant ship furthest left. A group of three large ships is shown in the middle distance. To the left is a fluyt under sail with a larger ship passing, hidden beyond and to the right. Further back, a Dutch warship lies at anchor. Another fluyt lies at anchor on the far right. In the foreground, a group of small craft, typical of Dutch inland waterways, is tossed about by the boisterous weather. On the left, a wijdschip, with a weyschuit or punter, is lowering its sail in the immediate foreground. Another wijdschip is seen from the stern under billowing canvas, under the stern of the fluyt. On the right a kaag, a common type of ferry boat, is running before the wind with sprit-rigged mainsail and foresail.

The artist has intentionally arranged a cross section of coastal craft in the painting to demonstrate the significance of the sea. Bakhuizen was initially a calligrapher in his native Germany before moving to Amsterdam. There, he was inspired by the grisaille drawings of van de Velde, the Elder. Later, he was introduced to marine painting in oils in the studios of van Everdingen and Dubbels. He was a contemporary of van de Velde, the Younger and shared with him a concern for painting ships with accuracy and understanding. The painting is signed.

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De Windstoot (The Gust)

By Willem van de Velde the Younger (ca. 1650-1707)

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

The painting depicts a three masted ship and a small boat caught by  a raging storm.

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By Willem van de Velde the younger

Rijksmuesum Amsterdam

On the third day of the Four Days Battle, 3 (13) June 1666, the flagship of Vice-Admiral  George Ayscue ran aground on the Galloper Sand. Terrified by the approaching Dutch fireships the crew of the “Prince Royal” was forced to surrender. The flood tide subsequently floated the ship, but her rudder was disabled and de Ruyter ordered her burned – to the fury of Cornelis Tromp, to whose squadron she had struck.

‘And so we lost the second best ship in England, having ninety brass pieces of ordnance and eight hundred men, which was a great grief to all the rest of the fleet,’ noted the sailor Edward Barlow.

Even after fifty-six years of service, ‘she was like a castle in the sea, and I believe the best ship that ever was built in the world to endure battering,’ wrote the minister of king Charles, Sir Thomas Clifford, ‘but she is gone and this is an ill subject to be longer upon’.

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By Willem van de Velde, the Elder, 1666-1693

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Willem van de Velde the Elder had accompanied the Dutch Fleet in a galliot to witness the events of the Four Days Battle that took place on June 11-14 1666 off the Flemish and English coasts. He sketched every phase and every detail of the battle. This drawing shows the Dutch fleet on the day before the battle began. The Dutch government had recently abandoned its opposition to bigger vessels and on this picture we can see some new powerful Dutch ships like de Ruyter’s new flagship “De Zeven Provinciën” of 80 guns, equivalent to English second rates. In addition to the new bigger ships the Dutch had mustered a fleet bigger than the opponent’s: eighty-six ships against fewer than sixty in the English squadron.

Colored drawing by Johan Herman Isings (from the sketch by Willem van de Velde, the Elder)

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By Willem van de Velde, the Younger. 1673-1707

The full name of this painting is “Nightly Fighting Between Cornelis Tromp on the ‘Gouden Leeuw’ and Sir Edward Spragg on the ‘Royal Prince’ During the Battle of Texel (Kijkduin) on August 21, 1673: Episode From the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-74)”. In this batlle the Dutch navy fought the combined force of the Royal Navy and the French Fleet, the alliance brought by the Treaty of Dover. French King Louis XIV invaded the Dutch Republic in 1672 seeking to gain control over the Spanish Netherlands. A secret treaty with King Charles II pulled England into the conflict and started the third Anglo-Dutch War.

The picture displays an episode from the Battle of Texel with Dutch ships in their failed attempt to capture the English flagship ‘Royal Prince’ (in the center). In this engagement the flagship of the Dutch admiral Cornelis Tromp the ‘Gouden Leeuw’ has been badly damaged and is seen sinking to the right of the ‘Prince‘.

The painting is exhibited in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

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CANNON FIRED (HET KANONSCHOT)

By Willem van de Velde, the Younger, 1707

(Rijkmuseum Amsterdam)

A warship in calm waters fires a cannon. Two boats are on the either side of the ship. Another warship is seen in the distance.

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A DUTCH FLAGSHIP COMING TO ANCHOR WITH A STATES YACHT BEFORE A LIGHT AIR

By Willem van de Velde, the Younger, 1658

An early painting by the artist before he had developed his own artistic style of ship portrayal. In the left foreground is a States yacht, in starboard-quarter view, running towards the flagship under a white sprit-sail and a brown square sail boomed out to port. She is thought to be the yacht laid down for Prince Frederik Hendrik but completed after his death in 1647 for Willem II. A date inscribed in the cartouche above the rudderhead is understood to be the date of the picture although only ‘165?’ can now be clearly read. She bears the arms of Orange and lion supporters on the stern, and Dutch colours at the peak, stern and dipped on a staff at the masthead. Two trumpeters positioned in the stern face towards the right as they play their instruments. The yacht is towing a boat with two men in it.

In the left middle distance is a ship at anchor, in port-quarter view, believed from her stern decoration to be the ‘Huis te Zwieten’, built in 1653. She shows the arms of Amsterdam above the rudder as well as crossed anchors to either side of it, signifying the Admiralty, and flies a Dutch flag at the fore and also as an ensign. In the left background are two ships under sail, close-hauled on the starboard tack. Other ships and vessels lie in the distance. To the right a large ship in port-bow view is under way close-hauled on the starboard tack and firing a forward gun to starboard. This is probably the ‘Eendracht’, 76 guns, built in 1653, with a prominent turret on her quarter gallery and lion supporters just visible on the taffrail. This was the flagship of Lieutenant-Admiral J. van Wassenaer who assembled the fleet that was to sail to the Baltic in October 1658. She flies a Dutch flag at the main, a plain red ensign and a striped jack, red white and blue. Men are visible on the main topsail yard preparing to furl the sail.

Pulling to the right in the centre foreground is a ship’s boat with four oars a side, four distinguished people seated aft and a trumpeter standing forward. A figure standing in the stern is gesturing towards the notable men in the boat. Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, promoted Vice-Admiral of Holland and Westfriesland in November 1653, flew his flag in the ‘Huis te Zwieten’ on convoy duty to the Mediterranean and back in 1654.

On 27 May 1658, at the time Wassenaer was assembling his Baltic squadron in the Texel, he once more sailed in her with a squadron for Portugal, and again in May 1659 when he led reinforcements to Wassenaer in Denmark. Assuming that the flag at the foremast of the ‘Huis te Zwieten’ signifies de Ruyter’s substantive rank of vice-admiral, the conjunction shown in the picture may therefore commemorate the scene in the Texel in the spring of 1658.

The artist was the younger son of Willem van de Velde the Elder. Born in Leiden, he studied under Simon de Vlieger in Weesp and in 1652 moved back to Amsterdam. He worked in his father’s studio and developed the skill of carefully drawing ships in tranquil settings. He changed his subject matter, however, when he came with his father to England in 1672-73, by a greater concentration on royal yachts, men-of-war and storm scenes. From this time painting sea battles for Charles II and his brother (and Lord High Admiral) James, Duke of York, and other patrons, became a priority. Unlike his father’s works, however, they were not usually eyewitness accounts. After his father’s death in 1693 his continuing role as an official marine painter obliged him to be more frequently present at significant maritime events. The painting is signed lower right ‘W.V.Velde’ and is unclearly dated to the 1650s as already noted.

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This is one of six near-identical official portraits of the Dutch national hero, Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, commissioned by the governors of the regional admiralties. De Ruyter commanded the Dutch fleet during the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1664-67). The ships in the background on the right were painted by Willem van de Velde the Younger. Technical examination shows they are on a separate canvas which was inserted into the main picture.

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The Battle of the Texel was fought between the Dutch and an Anglo-French fleet near Texel Island, off the Dutch coast. The low horizon, dramatic lighting and gunsmoke render this majestic work an immediate experience for the viewer. It was painted in 1687 as a Dutch commission, when van de Velde had already long been an ‘English’ court painter. The picture may even have been ordered by Admiral Cornelis Tromp, since it focuses on his flagship the Golden Leeuw (Golden Lion).

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