Bonaventura Peeters the Elder

With Julius Weitzner, New York;
Emile Wolf, New York, by 1965;
Thence by descent to the present owners. 

Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Le Siècle de Rubens, October - December 1965, no. 163 (lent by E. Wolf);
Waltham, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, 17th Century Paintings from the Low Countries, 27 February - 27 March, 1966, no. 13;
Providence, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design; Tampa, The Tampa Museum; Norfolk, The Chrysler Museum, The Discovery of the Everyday: Seventeenth Century Dutch Paintings from the Wolf Collection, 1982 - 1983, no. 36.

The painting overall reads very well and presents an attractive image which reads very well beneath a slightly yellowed varnish. The panel is flat and stable with cradling on the reverse and appears to be made up of a single horizontal board. The paint surface is stable, there is some cracking to the paint in the upper right corner of the sky and a fine line in the white cloud at left, the paint here is very slightly raised but stable. There is a possible old restored crack in the panel, running horizontally approx. 2.5in. from the center of the right edge. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals areas of retouching scattered throughout the sky, strengthening to the sail of the foreground shipping vessel and retouching attending to frame abrasion to the upper left corner and left edge. Some of these older retouches have since discolored very slightly over time but do not distract. Offered in a decoratively carved gilt wood frame.
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A pupil of Andries van Eertvelt and Simon de Vlieger, Bonaventura Peeters is one of the few Flemish artists to have specialized in marine painting, a tradition championed primarily by the Dutch. Recognized for his attention to detail and his depictions of ships atop turbulent seas, Peeters was first active in Antwerp, where he became a master of the Guild of Saint Luke in 1634, but he spent the end of his career in Hoboken, where he likely completed this painting.