Introduction to the Seascape Gallery

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This gallery contains seascape paintings of Dutch, English and French artists from 1600 to 1850.
The seascape style of art originated in the Netherlands in the 17th century, and is characterized by a low water line, ships and boats, and an accurate depiction of weather.
Ships, everyday fishermen and traders are depicted in great detail. The market for this art was fueled by wealth from trade and the fact that in 1610, one in ten Dutchmen was employed in seafaring.
A market for this style of beautiful and egalitarian art spread worldwide over the years and is still popular today.
Ship models in this gallery are from the same time period.

A Bit of History

In your homework, you were asked to ponder a question:

What is the relationship of art and history?

You cannot separate art and history. Why? Every piece of art is a historical record.

Let’s examine the historical record of the Dutch Golden Age, the 1600s.
Europe in the fifteen and 1600s was experiencing a religious reformation. At this time, the Netherlands was controlled by Spain. Beginning in the 1500s, there was a push by the Dutch for religious freedom. The more the people pressed for religious freedom, the more the Spanish tightened their noose of control. Finally, in the 1590s, the Dutch literally kicked the Spanish, and the authority of the Roman Church, out of the country, and formed a republic.

It was an idea whose time had come! There was an immediate rise in the middle class. Ordinary people began businesses and began to make money. Ocean shipping blossomed. Universities began teaching the sciences. It was truly the beginning of a golden age.

The formation of the republic had a profound effect on artists, for when the church and aristocracy left the country, artists lost their two best patrons. Thus, artists had to become businessmen. The good news was that the middle class was making enough money to give commissions to artists.

Thus, as you see in the Dutch paintings, artists painted ordinary people doing the typical jobs of the day: fishing and ocean shipping. And those subjects constitute beautiful art for us to enjoy and a historical record of the times.

Homework question to ponder:

What do I want to learn about viewing art?

Jackie Cavish, in her videos, gave you many clues about viewing art. She pointed out the elements of a Dutch seascape painting: Low waterline, ships and boats, and clouds.

Why a low waterline? The Netherlands is at sea level.
Why ships and boats? The major part of the economy of the Netherlands at the time was ocean shipping and fishing.
Why the seeming obsession with clouds and weather? The Dutch were sailors and fishermen; they watched the weather because they depended on it.

She also pointed out that the seascape style of art became a favorite subject of artists and spread worldwide.

Let’s follow up on her suggestions by viewing several other paintings in the gallery.

Dutch Men of War off a Rocky Coast with Fisherman on the Beach with their Catch, by Adam Willaerts

This is the oldest painting in the collection, dating to the year 1622.

What do you see? Boats in the bay, rocky coastline, small boats on the beach, men bringing fish up the beach, women sorting through the fish.

Does the title of the painting match with the action of the scene? Yes. The war ships are in the background, but the action in the foreground is peaceful: fishermen selling their catch.

Then, why did the artist pair war ships with fishing boats in this scene? The artist probably painted what he saw; this must have been a typical scene of the time.

Artists paint scenes from the culture in which they live; they leave a history of their times.
• The people depicted in the painting are ordinary working people of the times
• The ships and boats depicted are a record of those vessels of the time

Does the coastline depicted reflect a typical coastline in the Netherlands? No. There are no mountains in the Netherlands. The artist took “artistic license” in painting the coastline.

Dutch Naval Action, by Bonaventura Peeters

The artist has painted an historical event. It probably is not a specific event, but rather the depiction of events that often took place during Dutch shipping: the problem of fending off pirates.

This scene depicts a Dutch war ship, in Mediterranean waters, dispatching a boatload of Barbary pirates.

Why do you suppose the artist featured so many individuals in the painting? Unknown. But, the attention to details in the painting is remarkable. Note that each individual face in the painting has a unique expression.

A KAAG AND A SMALSCHIP UNDER SAIL, by Willem Van de Velde

The artist gave very accurate portrayals of ships and his feeling for atmosphere and majestic sense of composition. He painted images in rich color of oil paint. His complex designs were based on studies of his father’s ink drawings. Father and son shared a studio in Greenwich and set the standard for marine painters in England.

He left Amsterdam for England with his father in 1672 and in 1674 Charles II gave them a yearly retaining fee of 100 pounds each; the father received his “for taking and making draughts of seafights” and the son “for putting the said draughts into colours for our own particular use”. They did not switch their allegiance to England completely; both subsequently painted pictures of naval battles for the Dutch as well as the English market. Willem the Younger’s influence, however, was particularly great in England, where the whole tradition of marine painting stemmed from him.

Shipping in a Stormy Sea, by Julius Porcellis

This is another painting by a Dutch master. Note the attention to detail and the use of light.

Did the artist depict what is stated in the title of the painting? Yes. How? The sky is dark with a stormy look. The ocean waves are scary. Some of the ships are sailing well and some are not. Also there are sharks in the lower right hand corner of the painting.

What does this scene suggest about life? Some art historians suggest that this painting is a metaphor for life: Life is stormy, like the sea; if you pay attention to your duty, you will get through it; if you don’t pay attention to duty, you will be dashed against the rocks of disappointment and despair and ravaged by the evil elements of life.

Royal Sovereign, by Willem Van de Velde

This is the same Van de Velde that painted the first painting that Jackie discussed. You’ll note that it is quite different than the other painting. In the late 1600s, King Charles II of Great Britain enticed the Van de Velde, father and son, to come to England and commissioned them to paint British sea battles. This painting is an example of that work.

The painting appears to have had a portion of the left side cut off. Actually, someone removed the left hand portion of the canvas frame and folded the left portion of the canvas back.

It is speculated that one of the owners had the painting mutilated to fit a particular place of display. About a hundred years later, a subsequent owner hired an artist to recreate the folded portion. Unfortunately, the artist did not clean the painting first. A hundred years after the painting was restored, another owner had the painting cleaned, revealing the artist’s mistake.

The Royal Sovereign (Model), by Ed Marple

This model is the subject of the Van de Velde painting.

The ship was commissioned in the early 1600s by King Charles I. He wanted the largest flag ship of any navy in Europe and specified that the ship was to have at least a hundred guns.

The ship was completed, but just before the Admiralty presented it to the king, Charles heard that the Dutch were building a ship with more than a hundred guns. Stunned, he ordered the Admiralty to install more than a hundred guns on the Royal Sovereign.

Locate the four guns on the deck facing inward. If they had ever been fired, what would have happened? But, the king could honestly say his ship had more than a hundred guns.

There is a school of thought that the guns were placed in that position purposely. If the ship was ever boarded a certain command could be given to the crew to duck. Then those guns could be fired to kill the boarders. Unfortunately, that scenario doesn’t seem reasonable.

Question: Why did English artists begin painting seascapes?
Answer: Because the English king liked seascapes, and British royalty and the aristocracy were the main patrons of English artists.
Frigate and Fishing Boat Off Norththumberland, by John Wilson Carmichael
The island in the background is called Holy Island. Note the circle of birds flying on the right side of the painting. Do you think this depicts the artist’s attempt at a spiritual motive?
Mending Nets on the Shore, by Hermanus Koekkoek

This painting dates to about 1850. Compare it to the Van de Velde, painted two hundred years earlier. As you can see, the seascape style of painting endured. Now, let’s analyze this painting.

What do you see in this painting? All the elements of a seascape are there: low water line, ships and boats, clouds and weather. A peaceful scene. More color; the manufacture of artists’ paints had progressed, provided a wider variety of color. The attention to detail is stunning. Note the men smoking pipes, a new fad in the Netherlands in the nineteenth century.

Vasa Model
Vasa is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship foundered and sank after sailing about 1,400 yards into her maiden voyage on August 10, 1628. She was located in the late 1950s in a busy shipping lane just outside Stockholm harbor.
Salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961, she was moved to create the Vasa
Museum in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden’s most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 29 million visitors since 1961.
The ship was built on the orders of the King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus. She was constructed at the navy yard in Stockholm under a contract with private entrepreneurs in 1626–1627 and armed primarily with bronze cannons cast in Stockholm specifically for the ship. Richly decorated as a symbol of the king’s ambitions for Sweden and himself, upon completion she was one of the most powerfully armed vessels in the world.

However, Vasa was dangerously unstable and top-heavy with too much weight in the upper structure of the hull. Despite this lack of stability, she was ordered to sea and foundered only a few minutes after encountering a wind stronger than a breeze.
The order to sail was the result of a combination of factors. The king, who was leading the army in Poland at the time of her maiden voyage, was impatient to see her take up her station as flagship of the reserve squadron in the Stockholm Archipelago. At the same time the king’s subordinates lacked the political courage to openly discuss the ship’s structural problems or to have the maiden voyage postponed. An inquiry was organized to find those responsible for the disaster, but in the end no one was punished for the fiasco.
During the 1961 recovery, thousands of artifacts and the remains of at least 15 people were found in and around the Vasa’s hull. Among the many items found were clothing, weapons, cannons, tools, coins, cutlery, food, drink and six of the ten sails. The artifacts and the ship herself have provided scholars with invaluable insights into details of naval warfare, shipbuilding techniques and everyday life in early 17th-century Sweden.

Yacht Mary Model

The Yacht Mary was given to King Charles II of England on the restoration of the monarchy. She was 52 feet long. The word yacht derives from a Dutch word jagen meaning to hurry. Yachts came in many sizes and forms, from humble barges to elaborate hulls. They were used primarily to transport goods and people from docks to waiting vessels.

Dutch Fluyt Model

A fluyt was a Dutch type of sailing vessel originally designed as a dedicated cargo ship. They were built in three sizes. Originating from the Netherlands in the 16th century, the vessel was designed to facilitate transoceanic delivery with the maximum of space and crew efficiency. The inexpensive ship, which could be built in large numbers, was a significant factor in the 17th century rise of the Dutch seaborne empire.

The Amsterdam off Hellevoetisluis in honour of the Glorious Revolution of William III and the City of Amsterdam (1694)
In 1688, William of Orange and his wife Mary are about to board a warship at Amsterdam to invade England.
The British parliament, alarmed that King James II had converted to Catholicism and married a Catholic lady, with whom he had a male child who must be raised as a Catholic, feared the prospect of Catholic succession. In addition, Parliament was

distressed that King James had taken steps to consolidate power into the Crown and away from Parliament. Consequently, a delegation of British peers invited William of Orange, a Dutch noble, to invade England to restore protestant succession. Mary, William’s wife and a protestant, had been next in line to succeed to the throne of England before King James son was born.
William readily agreed to the scheme, for he had feared a British/French alliance that would allow France to invade the Netherlands and spell the end to its Republic. The British peers assured him that elements of the British military would defect to his cause as the invasion proceeded.
In November, 1688, William’s armada of 463 ships and 15,000 troops reached the British coast. They met with little resistance from the British army and no resistance at all from the Royal Navy.
King James and his family fled to France. Parliament declared the throne vacant and offered it to William and Mary as co-monarchs.
The event became known as “The Glorious Revolution” because their reign heralded the establishment of the constitutional monarchy that exists to this day.
Parliament passed the Bill of Rights which prevented Catholics succeeding to the throne, and limited the power of monarchs so they could neither pass laws nor levy taxes without parliamentary consent. The Bank of England was founded to control public expenditure.
Williamsburg and the college of William and Mary in Virginia were named after the King and Queen in 1693.
Artist: Ludolf Backhuysen (1630 – 1708)
Backhuysen was a German-born Dutch Golden Age painter. He was born in Emden, East Frisia, and came to Amsterdam in about 1650, working as a merchant’s clerk and a calligrapher. He discovered a genius for painting and devoted himself to art from the late 1650s. His compositions are nearly all variations of one subject, the sea.
Backhuysen had a style peculiarly his own, marked by intense realism. He died in Amsterdam in 1708.