Ludolf Bakhuizen Emden 1630 - 1708 Amsterdam

Anonymous sale, Berlin, Lepke, 31 March 1914, lot 33;
Leo van den Bergh, Berlin, by 1923,
His sale, Amsterdam, Graupe and Mak van Waay, 5/6 November 1935, lot 1 (as on panel);
With G. Cramer, The Hague, by 1981.

C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschriebendes und Kritsches Verzeichnis der Werke…, vol. VII, Esslingen/Paris 1918, p. 340, no. 449;
K.J. Müllenmeister in Kunst & Antiquitäten, IV, 1979, p. 37, reproduced p. 36, fig. 7;
Kunstbeursgids, Delft 1981.

Although Bakhuizen probably painted this painting in the late 1690s, relatively late in his career, it is reminiscent of a composition painted somewhat earlier in his career, now in the Museum der Bildende Künste, Leipzig (inv. no. 781). Not only the position of the left ship is similar, especially the sky appears alike. It is the moment when a storm starts; dark heavy clouds break through the whiter clouds, soon to be followed by heavy rain. In both works Bakhuizen composed the sky in the same manner and painted a smalship breaking through strong waves. In 1695 he painted a Christ in the storm at Lake Galilei, presently in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis. [1] Following Rembrandt's famous painting in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston [2], Bakhuizen re-used the composition, although the richer, more dramatic tones and sharper brushwork of his later work have a clear overtone.

[1] G. de Beer, Ludolf Backhuysen, Sein Leben und Werk (1630-1708), Zwolle 2002, p. 143, no. 86, reproduced fig. 172;
[2] inv. no. P21S24; stolen in 1981.