Willem van de Velde the Younger

Robert de Saint Victor, Paris, 1822;
John Smith, London;
Michael Zachary, London;
Frederick Perkins, London, by 1835;
By inheritance to George Perkins, Chipstead, Kent, 1863;
His deceased sale, London, Christie's, 14 June 1890, lot 27, for 850 Guineas, where acquired by "Davis" for the Duke of Marlborough;
By descent to Lily Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (d. 1909);
By whose Executors sold, London, Christie's, 7 June 1918, lot 127, for 1,100 Guineas, where acquired by Colnaghi;
With Knoedler, London, 1918;
With Colnaghi, London, 1924;
Leonard Gow, March, 1925;
With P. & D. Colnaghi, London, 1936;
Sir Bruce Ingram, O.B.E., M.C., London, and Great Pednor Manor, Chesham, Bucks, 1936, until his death in 1963;
By whose Executors sold, London, Sotheby's, 11 March 1964, lot 38, for £14,000 where acquired by Wetzlar;
Dr. Hans Wetzlar, Amsterdam;
Wetzlar sale, 1977, lot 20, when bought back.

London, The British Institution, 1824, no. 79;
London, The British Institution, 1853, no. 57 (where lent by Frederick Perkins);
London, The British Institution, 1863 no. 7 (where lent by George Perkins);
London, Colnaghi's, Masterpieces of Marine Art from the collection of Captain Bruce S. Ingram, 1938, no. 10;
Possibly Eastbourne, Towner Art Gallery & Museum, August 1946 (lent by Sir Bruce Ingram);
London, The Royal Academy, Winter Exhibition. Dutch Pictures, 1952-53, no. 555;
Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum, Zee-, Rivier- en Oevergezichten, 1964, no. 82;
Laren, 1966, no. 55;
Tokyo, Museum of Occidental Art, The Century of Rembrandt, 1968, no. 47 (and in 1969 in Kyoto);
Amsterdam, Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Nederland Waterland, Jubileum Exhibition, 1972, no. 90.

 

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. VI, London 1835, p. 350, no. 110;
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. VIII, Esslingen 1923, no. 293;
Voorkeuren, p. 66 reproduced p. 67;
M. Robinson, Willem van de Velde,  London 1990, vol. I, pp. 308-10, no. 157, reproduced p. 309.

ENGRAVED:
In etching, by E. Salmon.

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a firm old lining, and older stretcher. The original stretcher had unusually wide bars to judge from the quite fine, early lines on all sides, but there has clearly also been a narrower stretcher at some point. The water at the lower left corner has a cluster of small retouchings and a small old knock. A band of discoloured retouching runs along the base, perhaps on the tacking edge, and is slightly flaking. Lines of retouching along the other edges are slender at the sides but near the top left corner there is a rather wider retouched patch, with some other retouching along the stretcher bar line just into the edge of the first cloud. At the upper right edge there is a band of strengthening in the sky and the horizontal dark clouds in the upper right corner are broadly strengthened. The blue sky in the upper left centre and towards the right side also has a certain amount of light surface strengthening, with some also just above the sails on the right. There are rather thinner areas in the centre and lower left sky, and the rigging in the central ships is also sometimes quite thin, although the ship on the right has magnificently crisp intact detail and rich darks, as has the foreground virtually throughout. There are a few tiny lost flakes in the sky, with rather more around the second sail from the left, a few by the sail at centre right and one longer vertical retouching up the side of the russet sail in the middle distance at centre left. The restoration is quite old and the retouching sometimes discoloured, although the varnish is still transparent and mellow if fairly blond. Essentially nevertheless the painting retains a remarkably fine unity. The craquelure is beautifully even and the lower part of the painting is especially well intact, including every minute detail of the great ship on the right. The sky line has been slightly worn in places with the sky, but the delicate balance of tone into the distance is still finely preserved, as is the cloudscape overall. This report was not done in laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

On a warm sunny day under light cumulus cloud, a large assembly of small vessels rest in a calm near a jetty to the extreme left.  There is an air of measured activity which never threatens to undermine the pervading tranquil mood. The vessels, including a States Yacht, smalschips, a kaag, a wijdschip, ponts and rowing vessels, may well have been assembled to provision larger vessels lying unseen offshore, perhaps at the usual assembly point off Texel, perhaps in preparation for an expedition.

Michael Robinson, who saw this painting in 1977, was not sure if the last digit of the date should be read as a 3 or a 5, but he thought 1655 to be a more likely date than any earlier in the decade.  He considers it to have been painted substantially by Willem van de Velde the Younger for the Van de Velde studio, since at this early date a commission would most likely have been given to his father, and he would have used his father's working drawings of individual vessels rather than his own.¹  The composition reflects the type adopted by the Elder Van de Velde for his grisaille penschilderijen of the 1650s and 1660s, such as the one also datable circa 1655 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.²  Simon de Vlieger and Jan van de Cappelle also used similar types of composition in their monumental calms.

Frederick Perkins formed a distinguished collection, mainly of Dutch landscape and genre pictures, but including some Spanish and Italian works.  The most expensive painting in the sale of the collection following his son's death was catalogued as by Rembrandt, but turned out to be a forgery, an early casualty of Rembrandt scholarship.  From 1936 until his death in 1963 the present work belonged to the great marine collector Sir Bruce Ingram.  Ingram was a connoisseur of the Van de Veldes, and owned many drawings by them, some of which he presented to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.  His paintings were partly dispersed in a sale at Sotheby's in 1964.  Hans Wetzlar bought three works in the sale: the present one; another Van de Velde; and a winter landscape by Jacob van Ruisdael.

1.  No drawings directly connected with this painting have been found so far, but Robinson notes that an unfinished quarter-view apparently of the same States Yacht by Willem van de Velde the Elder is among the large holdings of Van de Velde drawings in The Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. MB1866/T434).
2.  See Robinson, under Literature, vol. I, pp. 112-13, no. 276.