WILLEM VAN DE VELDE THE YOUNGER AND STUDIO | A calm with an English Merchant Ship at anchor

P. Estens, Park Dale, Reigate, Surrey;

G. Smit, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire;

With W.E. Duits, London;

With P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 1951 (when exhibited at the Delft Antique Dealers Fair, no. 51);

Private collection, The Hague;

Anonymous sale, The Hague, Venduehuis, 17 May 2017, lot 1108 (as Studio of Willem van de Velde II), where acquired.

M.S. Robinson, A catalogue of the paintings of the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, Greenwich, National Maritime Museum 1990, vol. II, 1990, pp. 654–55, cat. no. 591, reproduced p. 654.

As with many of Van de Velde’s late English-period paintings from circa 1700, which are likewise richly-coloured and accurately and finely-drawn, this work is signed on the reverse of the canvas with large, flowing initials. The scene depicts an English Merchant ship at anchor, firing a gun to port as a ship’s boat pulls away from her; to the right is a large fishing pink, and other ships are visible beyond.¹

¹ Robinson (see Literature) notes that the round stern of the principal ship is English, though she also has some 'rather Dutch-looking decoration', and the lion holding an orb on her tafferel may give her a connection with Venice.