A Calm

A huddle of boats drop anchor on a glassy sea, their occupants busying themselves with maintaining their vessels. Bright patches of light play across the calm water, reflecting the clouds above. The loosely-painted cloudscape provides an impressionistic backdrop to the precise realism of the boats arranged along the low horizon. A complex network of lines traces the ships’ rigging, spars and masts, all accurately positioned, while a flutter of flags and pendants identify individual boats. In the centre, a fishing boat is transferring its catch to a skiff, one fisherman nonchalantly leaning against the baskets already onboard. In a small yacht (a bezan in Dutch), with the coat of arms of Amsterdam visible on the stern, sails are being gathered up by a woman in a black bonnet. Stationed on the left and right, warships balance the composition, one firing a salute to break the silence, the rigging alive with tiny figures in different poses.

The concentration of individual boats, and the suggestion of a flotilla of vessels filling the horizon, are all typical of the leading seventeenth-century Dutch marine artist, Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633-1707). This painting is possibly a copy of a now lost work. Van de Velde the Younger worked alongside his father, Willem van de Velde the Elder (1611-93), who was a renowned draughtsman of marine vessels. Based upon his father’s precise technical drawings, Van de Velde the Younger placed boat ‘portraits’ into seascapes, which Dutch viewers would have recognised. Popular with the growing Dutch merchant class, these paintings offered a show of pride in the seafaring nation and an escape into the changing moods of the sea.