Lot 60
  • 60

Ludolf Backhuysen Emden 1630 - 1708 Amsterdam

Estimate
15,000 - 20,000 USD
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Description

  • Ludolf Backhuysen
  • the embarkation of william III and mary of orange
  • signed in brown ink, lower right: Backusen

  • pen and brown ink and gray wash over black chalk

Provenance

Eva, Countess of Rosebery,
by whom sold, London, Sotheby's, 22 November 1974, lot 11 

Literature

G. de Beer, Ludolf Backhuysen 1630-1708, Sien Leben und Werk, Zwolle 2002, p. 129

Catalogue Note

This drawing served as the preparatory study for Backhuysen's highly important painting of the same title, sold London, Sotheby's, 6 December 2006 (fig. 1; see G. de Beer, op. cit., pp. 128-131, fig. 153). 

In the painting, the main ship flies a grand Royal banner in place of the simple Dutch flag seen here, and there are one or two other minor differences, but in every other significant respect the compositions are identical.  To the left of the foreground we see a States-Yacht, bringing the Royal couple to the Dutch flagship Amsterdam, which is to bear them from the Netherlands to England.  Contemporary accounts state that they set sail on 2 November 1688 and landed in Torbay four days later, to commence the so-called Glorious Revolution, an almost entirely bloodless campaign which led to the flight of James II and the coronation of William and Mary on 13 February 1689. 

The painting is dated 1694, some six years after the event depicted; the intervening period was one of many defeats for the Dutch forces, on both land and sea, and perhaps the picture should be seen as an attempt to revive the memory of the Netherlands' recent triumphal past, in a time of national adversity.