Schepen op de rede (Ships on the Roadstead)

By Willem van de Velde the Younger, 1658

This work by Willem van de Velde displays a calm scene of Dutch merchant and fishing vessels on a roadstead in a still weather. In the middle of the painting a yacht with a richly decorated stern  dominates the scene while small boats shuffle goods and passengers between humble looking merchant ships.

A Smalschip with Two Dutch East Indiamen Coming to Anchor

By Hendrik-Jacobsz Dubbels

A dramatic portrayal of two Dutch East Indiamen who may have returned from a journey overseas. The ship on the left, in distant port-quarter view, has a scene painted on her stern depicting a pavilion with trees, possibly palm trees and thus a reference to her exotic trade associations. Men are portrayed in the rigging, working on the sails. In the centre foreground, a smalschip sails into wind and six men can be seen in her stern. A smalschip, meaning narrow ship, took its name from its ability to negotiate locks on inland waterways. One of the men gestures towards the ship on the far right, seen in port-bow view with a carved figurehead of a lion. The deck is laden with men busy on various tasks as it prepares to anchor. The two ships are flying Dutch flags and a plain red jack. In the far distance, a landscape can be seen on either side of the picture. To the far left, this includes a skyline of church towers, and to the right, the curved shape of dunes, suggesting this is an estuary scene or a channel between islands on the Dutch coast. Strong contrasts of light and dark dominate both sea and sky, and the striking formation of the clouds dominates the top-half of the image. The artist has signed his name on the buoy in the centre foreground.

Dubbels was an Amsterdam painter working chiefly within the tradition established by his master, Simon de Vlieger, and with other marine artists. He is thought to have worked in the studio of the van de Veldes, before they moved to London, and the Dutch marine artist Ludolf Bakhuysen was his pupil.

The Frigate "De Ploeg" on the Ij in Amsterdam

By Ludolf Bakhuizen (ca. 1685-1695)

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

The Ij is a river, formerly a bay, that is known for being Amsterdam’s waterfront. On this painting Amsterdam is seen in the background behind merchant vessels and men of war including the frigate De Ploeg in the front.

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.

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.

By Ivan Aivazovsky. 1848

This painting depicts the duel between the turkish flagship Real Mustafa (84 guns) and russian admiral Spiridov’s ship Svyatoy Evstafiy (68). During the boarding action the burning debris of the turkish ship set the russian flagship on fire and soon she blew up. The russian admiral escaped the explosion just minutes before. Ten minutes later Real Mustafa exploded too. The turkish squandron retreated to the Bay of Chesma only to be destroyed there in the next two days in what later to be called Battle of Chesma.

Russian painter Ivan Aivazovsky dedicated a number of his works to this battle. This one was painted in 1848.

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’.

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)

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.

AN ENGLISH SIXTH-RATE SHIP FIRING A SALUTE AS A BARGE LEAVES; A ROYAL YACHT NEARBY

by Willem van de Velde, the Younger, 1706

A variety of shipping is shown in a calm. In the foreground on the left a small boat with two figures on board is rowing towards the left. One figure works at the oars and the other is standing up in the boat and attends to a fishing net on the starboard side. To the right is an elaborately decorated sixth-rate ship in port-quarter view. She flies a Union flag at the main and a pendant at the mizzen, which is probably a signal. Her port anchor is visible and may indicate that she is about to anchor. She is flying a salute to starboard as a ship’s barge in the centre pulls away from her port quarter. A figure leans in a leisurely manner from the mizzen top, while other figures are occupied on the deck and in the rigging. In the left middle-distance beyond is a royal yacht, viewed from before the port beam with her mainsail, topsail, foresail and jib set. Other vessels can be seen in the left distance. It is has been suggested that the main vessel is the ‘Peregrine Galley’, which was a 20-gun ship built at Sheerness in 1700, since it resembles an annotated pen and ink drawing of this vessel with manuscript notes relating to her decoration.

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 ‘W.V.Velde J 1706’.