Willem van de Velde the Elder

Numbers 1 and 2 of this series, dated 1641, are in the Ingram Collection.

Hinged on to an old mount which in turn is laid down on paper. There is some minor discoloration to the four edges and a small light brown stain above the central ship. Otherwise in good condition.
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Almost a pure landscape, this extremely atmospheric view of the rugged Norwegian coast is the earliest in date of all the Northumberland Van de Velde drawings.  It was executed in 1641, during a trip to Norway that was very possibly the artist's first excursion outside his native Holland.  From its numbering, it is clear that the present drawing was seen by Van de Velde as one in a series of drawings of the same subject or event, and throughout his subsequent career he numbered his drawings in this way.  No. 2 in the same series as the present work is in the Ingram Collection at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich;  that drawing is dated by the artist 1641, so the Northumberland sheet must also date from the same year.¹  Although by 1641 Van de Velde was already 30 years old and presumably a well established artist, no dated drawings exist from before 1638, so this is one of his earliest securely datable drawings.  Most of the artist's other early works are carefully executed 'pen-paintings' or equally meticulous pen and ink drawings, so the free and spontaneous approach to the landscape seen here is remarkable, revealing in a most surprising way the extent to which Van de Velde was in touch with, and perhaps even contributing to, the latest developments in Dutch landscape draughtsmanship. 

The drawing also antedates by some three years Allaert van Everdingen's ground-breaking views of Norwegian scenes, made in 1644, which were in turn to have such a profound influence on the work of Jacob van Ruisdael, so this seemingly modest landscape is actually of some considerable significance in terms of the recording of 'exotic' foreign views by 17th-century Dutch artists.  Though not by any means one of the most ambitious of the Northumberland Van de Veldes, and certainly not one of the largest, this is none the less one of the most original, atmospheric, and straighforwardly beautiful of all the drawings in this remarkable group. 

1.  M.S. Robinson, A Catalogue of Drawings in the National Maritime Museum made by the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, Cambridge 1974, vol. II,, p. 3, no. 747, reproduced pl. 2