Attributed to Simon Jacobsz. de Vlieger

William R. Drown, London, 1972.

Birmingham 1995, no. 25;
New Orleans 1997, no. 60;
Baltimore 1999, no. 59 (all of the above as by de Vlieger).

New Orleans 1997, pp. 153-155, cat. no. 60, reproduced (as by de Vlieger);
Baltimore 1999, pp. 138-141, cat. no. 59, reproduced (as by de Vlieger).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This work is painted on two pieces of oak joined horizontally through the center. The paint layer is not in particularly good condition. There is a good deal of thinness throughout the darker colors, particularly in the sky, which has received numerous retouches. All of these are clearly visible under ultraviolet light. There are also retouches in the larger sail on the right and throughout the water. It is not recommended that the work be cleaned, as these retouches will be removed to reveal chronic abrasion.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

An immensely threatening sky with dark-grey cumulous clouds is illuminated by a bright bolt of lightening, which is reflected in the water. The rough waters are filled with vessels on the right while the figures in the row boat in the foreground appear to remain blithely fishing while another boat behind it is making its way into the harbor marked off by the wooden poles of a jetty. The empty center of the picture showing only an awesome, ominous sky with a sweeping strike of lightning is poignant. All in all, the subject of this painting is the weather itself.  Portrayals of such thunderstorms were only painted in a short period, from the 1620s until the late 1640s, and are notably rare. Created by the likes of Simon de Vlieger, Jan van Goyen, Aelbert Cuyp and a few  others, these representations of thunderstorms present a special but relatively popular subject which had traditionally been regarded as unpaintable, difficult  as it was to imitate nature in all its force and power. ¹

The first sailing vessel depicted on the right is a kaag, a relatively small inland regular service vessel (also called ‘beurtvaarder’ or ‘beurtschip’ in Dutch) which transported both cargo and people; one of the boatmen is lowering its jib in anticipation of the storm arriving from the left while the other is tending to the large sail. Further away we see a wijdschip, its white sail beautifully catching the illumination of the lightning, which was also an inland regular service vessel, albeit bigger and also suitable for coastal waters such as the Zuiderzee.

This painting has been invariably attributed to De Vlieger by the RKD in The Hague, recently confirmed by Laurens Schoemaker of the RKD; characteristic for the artist are the diffuse sky area with the bright zigzag stripes, and the accurately depicted sailing vessels on the far horizon which recur in other signed works by De Vlieger. ²  All these works, on panel and of similar dimensions, were painted by De Vlieger in the late 1640s. However, other scholars have recently offered other attributions for this wonderful atmospheric picture, all kindly given on basis of digital photographs. Dr. Jan Kelch³ has suggested that this picture is from the workshop of De Vlieger, and can be dated to circa 1640-45; in his opinion the lightning effect is overdone, with the jetty painted in ‘staccato’ against the bright lit thunder sky.  He also finds the figures too simply drawn and the form of the (white) signature atypical. The white signature, however, has strengthened an underlying original signature or was added at a later stage. In Kelch’s opinion the composition is very close to those by De Vlieger, but the latter would have been painted differently. ⁴

The consensus is that this is a good picture from around the 17^th mid-Century showing a fantastic example of a serious weather condition omnipresent in that period, painted in a near monochromatic palette typical of the 1640s, with tonal coloring using only various shades of browns, yellows, and some greys for the sky, and whites for the details ‘touched’ by the lightning. It is consistent with De Vlieger’s accepted storm paintings in terms of subject matter, composition, style and format, as Minty observed in both the New Orleans and Baltimore exhibition catalogue of the Weldon collection. ⁵

We are grateful to Laurens Schoemaker, Dr. Jan Kelch, Remmelt Daalder and Jeroen Giltaij for their kind help in cataloguing this lot, and to Remmelt Daalder especially for his help in identifying the vessels.

 

1. R. Falkenburg, ‘Onweer bij Jan van Goyen. Artistieke wedijver en de markt voor het Hollandse landschap on de 17de eeuw’, in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 48 (Nature and Landscape in Netherlandish Art 1500-1850), 1997, pp. pp. 116-161, especially pp. 136-143 (chapter dedicated to ‘The Market for Thunderstorms’).
2. Strongly comparable signed pictures by De Vlieger are: with Bammann, Düsseldorf in 1937, one recorded with Lord Leconfield at Petworth House, West Sussex, one recorded in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, Lugano and one recorded in a Rotterdam on 28/30 May 1952, lot 76 (all RKD photo records).
3. J. Kelch, Studien zu Simon de Vlieger als Marinemaler, diss. Berlin Freie Universität Berlin 1971.
4. According to Remmelt Daalder (former curator of the Scheepvaartmuseum Amsterdam) this picture is close to works by painters like Pieter Mulier the Elder (1600-1659) and maybe also Julius Porcellis (1610-1645); to be compared with Mulier’s signed paintings in the Koninklijk Schilderijenkabinet Het Mauritshuis (inv. no. 549) and in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (inv. no. BHC0820). Jeroen Giltaij (former curator of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam) attributes this picture to the Rotterdam painter Lieve Verschuier (1627-1686), mentioning the typical flashes of light and burning sunsets in Verschuier’s other marine paintings.  But also the wildly painted sky would be characteristic of Verschuier. The dating would then perhaps be ca. 1660 (see J. Giltaij, "Lieve Verschuier (1627-1686), een Rotterdamse scheepsbeeldhouwer en schilder", in Schatkamer. Veertien opstellen over maritiem-historische onderwerpen aangeboden aan Leo M. Akkeveld bij zijn afscheid van het Maritiem Museum Rotterdam, Franeker 2002, pp. 67-81, with oeuvre catalogue). 
5. See Exhibited/Literature, p. 139.