Willem van de Velde the Elder

M.S. Robinson, A Catalogue of Drawings in the National Maritime Museum made by the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, Cambridge 1958, vol. I, p. 157, under no. 321

Laid down on paper. The work is made up of three joined sheets which meet vertically at the the centre left and right of the composition. There are four additional old fold lines running vertically down the width of the sheet. There is evidence of some minor surface dirt to the four edges and some minor light brown stains to the sheet in places. The paper has buckled in places, predominantly along the edges, due to the way the sheet is currently laid down. The medium is fresh throughout.
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This outstanding, energetically drawn image of one of the key vessels with which the Dutch fought the English during the 1660s and '70s is also a definitive example of a Van de Velde 'ship portrait,' a totally distinctive type of drawing that the Van de Veldes made entirely their own.  These drawings were made primarily as factual documents, meticulously recording features such as the numbers of gun-ports and details of stern decorations, so that when the ships in question were included in painted compositions, they were depicted with total accuracy.  Yet these Van de Velde 'ship portraits' are almost always much more than dry records of fact, and in an outstanding example such as this, where all the details are drawn with immense freedom and liveliness, the term 'portrait', with all its implications of personality, is fully justified.

Here the ship 'portrayed,' from the port beam, is the great 80-gun warship, Zeven Provincien, built in 1665, and named after the rebellious seven northern provinces of the Netherlands, which had fought so valiantly and so long for independence from their Spanish overlords.  This Zeven Provincien, the third ship to bear this illustrious name, served in many important campaigns, and was finally broken up in 1694.  There are four other drawings of her in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich,¹ and she was also the subject of another, smaller and rather less formal, portrait drawing in the Northumberland collection, lot 29 in the present sale. 

The present drawing, one of the grandest images of this famous ship that has come down to us, is the most monumental ship portrait in the Northumberland collection of drawings by the Van de Veldes, yet is also one of the most immediate and engaging drawings in the whole group.   

1. Robinson, op. cit., p. 157, nos. 321, 352, 241, and vol. II, p. 85, no. 1050