Jan van de Cappelle

Sir Joseph B. Robinson Bt, (1840-1929), Dudley House, Park Lane, London;

His sale, London, Christie's, 6 July 1923, lot 50;

Where acquired by "Storey" and subsequently resold to Robinson;

Thence by descent to his daughter, Princess Ida Louise Robinson Labia (1871-1961), Capetown, South Africa;

Thence by descent to her son, Count Natale Labia (1924-2016), Wynberg, Cape Town, South Africa;

By whom sold ("The Robinson Collection"), London, Sotheby's, 6 December 1989, lot 102;

Anonymous sale ("The Property of a Gentleman"), London, Sotheby's, 9 July 1998, lot 8;

Where acquired by a private collection, Europe;

By whom anonymously sold ("Property from a European Private Collection"), London, Sotheby's, 5 December 2018, lot 15, for £2,050,000;

Where acquired by the present collector.

London, Royal Academy, The Robinson Collection, 1958, no. 46;

Cape Town, National Gallery of South Africa, The Joseph Robinson Collection, 1959, no. 30;

Zurich, Kunsthaus, Sammlung Sir Joseph Robinson 1840-1929, 17 August - 16 September 1962, no. 21;

Cape Town, National Gallery of South Africa, 1962-1977, on loan;

Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery, 1977-1981, on loan;

London, Wildenstein, Twenty Masterpieces from the Natale Labia Collection, 1978, no. 4;

Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, 1981-1988, on loan;

Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1988-1989, on loan.

A. Scharf, "The Robinson Collection," in Burlington Magazine 100, no. 666 (September 1958), pp. 300, 304;

The Robinson Collection, Paintings from the Collection of the Late Sir J. B. Robinson, Bt., Lent by the Princess Labia, exhibition catalogue, London 1958, p. 24, cat. no. 46;

The Sir Joseph Robinson Collection, Lent by the Princess Labia, exhibition catalogue, Cape Town 1959, p. 9, cat. no. 30;

Sammlung Sir Joseph Robinson 1840-1929, Werke europäischer malerei vom 15. bis 19. Jahrhundert, exhibition catalogue, Zurich 1962, p. 21, cat. no. 21;

M. Russell, Jan van Cappelle 1624/6–1679, Leigh-on-Sea 1975, p. 89, cat. no. 6, reproduced pl. 90.

In this luminescent seascape, Jan van de Cappelle captures the mood of a sunny and nearly windless summer day. This painting likely dates to circa 1650, when Van de Cappelle tended to concentrate his compositions on central marine vessels flanked by open vistas on both sides. Around this same time he began to refine his palette, creating atmospheric effects through a warmer, gold tonality and employing broader, more painterly brushwork.

In the present picture, as always with Van de Cappelle, the sky itself (encompassing nearly three-quarters of the panel) serves as the protagonist. The sea is calm: only the gentlest ripples disrupt its smooth surface as the clouds provide a visual contrast to the blue sky. Fishermen unload a small rowboat in the foreground, while at center a smalschip navigates toward open waters with sails unfurled. Beyond, a states yacht fires a salute near a fortified island. Van de Cappelle's exceptional talent and originality is perhaps best observed in his treatment of the water, mirroring the colors and contours of the ships on its glass-like surface.

Comparable coastal scenes from this same moment include Van de Cappelle's Ships in a Calm from the early 1650s in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and River View with Boats of 1651 in the Kunsthaus, Zurich.¹ 

A Note on the Provenance

The first recorded owner of this painting, Sir Joseph Robinson Bt (1840–1929) was a South African magnate who made his fortune in diamond and gold-mining. Robinson had settled in London by the mid-1890s, taking out a lease in 1894 on Dudley House on Park Lane, with its magnificent eighty-feet-long picture gallery. With the help of his advisors, art dealers Sir George Donaldson and Charles Davis, he set about amassing a highly important collection of around 170 Old Master and British paintings, mostly acquired between 1894 and 1899. These included superlative works such as Giambattista Tiepolo’s Madonna of the Rosary, Murillo’s Vision of Saint Francis of Paola, Van Dyck’s Portrait of Jacob de Witte, Frans Hals’ Portrait of a Gentleman, and Turner’s Falls of the Clyde.² After 1900, the pace of Robinson’s collecting slowed but fine French eighteenth-century works were bought for the reception rooms at Dudley House.

After becoming a Baronet in 1908, Robinson returned to South Africa in 1910. He spent the duration of the First World War there as the contents of Dudley House were put into storage. From these, a selection of 116 works was sent to auction at Christie’s in July 1923. However, Robinson, who was by then nearly eighty, was struck on the eve of the auction with seller’s remorse. Too late to withdraw the pictures, he instead placed prohibitively high reserves on the lots and succeeded in retaining all but twelve works. In 1958, eighty-four works, including the present painting, were exhibited at the Royal Academy in London and the following year at the National Gallery of South Africa in Cape Town. 

¹ Los Angeles County Museum of Art, inv. no. M.2003.108.6; Zurich, Kunsthaus, inv. no. R49.

² Giambattista Tiepolo, Madonna of the Rosary. Private collection (sold Sotheby's New York, 29 January 2019, lot 61); Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Vision of Saint Francis of Paola. Getty Museum, Los Angeles, inv. no. 2003.144; Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait of Jacob de Witte. Private collection (sold Sotheby's London, 8 December 2021, lot 6); Frans Hals, Portrait of a man, dated 1630. Private collection; Joseph Mallard William Turner, Falls of the Clyde. Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, inv. no. LL 3584.