Ludolf Backhuysen

Backhuysen's drawings range considerably in style, from large-scale, rather minutely finished works drawn with the brush, to smaller, sketchier sheets like this one, dashed off in rapid strokes of pen and brown ink, and worked up with broad, grey or brown washes.  Many of the artist's drawings of the second type appear to represent his initial thoughts for painted compositions, for example the sheet in the British Museum¹, much the same size as the present drawing and stylistically very comparable, which Gerlinde de Beer has identified as a preliminary study for the grand painting, Shipping in a stiff breeze, executed around 1670, and now in the Cannon Hall Museum, Barnsley.²

While there does not seem to be a surviving painting that can be directly connected with the present drawing, there are none the less significant similarities with the composition of the Rijksmuseum's famous, large canvas depicting Shipping on a choppy sea, painted rather later in Bakhuysen's career, in 1692.³  The forms of the main vessel towards the left, and the towering central cloud formation, are also similar to another, even later, painting, also in the Rijksmuseum, Seas off the Coast, with Spritsail Barge (1697).⁴  

1.  London, British Museum, inv. 1895,0915.1094; G. de Beer, Ludolf Backhuysen (1630-1708), Sein Leben und Werk, Zwolle 2002, pp. 156, 158, no. Z 24,  reproduced fig. 196 

2.  De Beer, op. cit., pp. 81-2, no. 36, reproduced fig. 91

3.  Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. SK-A-10; Ibid., pp. 124, 126, no. 73, reproduced fig. 149

4.  Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. SK-A-2316