WILLEM VAN DE VELDE THE YOUNGER | Small Dutch vessels in a light breeze anchored off a beach

Samuel S. Joseph, 1894; His widow, Mrs Joseph, by whom sold with the entire collection to Knoedler in June 1911;

With M. Knoedler, London;

From whom presumably acquired by Henry Hirsch, 23 Park Lane, London;

His sale, London, Christie's, 12 June 1931, lot 23, for £294 to P. & D. Colnaghi, London, on behalf of Clive Cookson, Milburn House, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and invoiced to him by Colnaghi on 20 July 1931, for £334. 8s;

Thence by descent to the present owner.

London, Royal Academy, Exhibition of Old Masters, 1894, no. 79.

C. Hofstede de Groot, A Cataloge Raisonné..., vol. VII, London 1923, p. 102, no. 394; M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde. A Catalogue of the Paintings of the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, London 1990, vol. I, pp. 426–27, no. 4 [1], reproduced. 

The following condition report is provided by Simon Folkes who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Jan van der Velde the Younger Small Dutch vessels in a light breeze anchored off a beach Support: The painting is on canvas which has been relined. The lining, which possibly dates back as far as the 1920's, is in good condition and the canvas is tacked to a wooden expandable stretcher with two central crossbars that is also in a good state of repair. Paint layers: The paint surface is generally in very good condition. There has been some minor abrasion to the sky at the upper right corner which has since been retouched and under ultra-violet light it is possible to see some fine retouching in other areas of the sky as well as in the water around the standing figure, covering thin drying crack lines and some minor areas of thinness. Other small retouchings can also be seen under UV across the foreground but the boats and figures have hardly any strengthening and have survived in a remarkably good state of preservation. Varnish coating: The painting is covered in a thin transparent coating of picture varnish. Recent treatment: The painting was cleaned and restored by Simon Folkes earlier this year.
"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."

The vessels moored inshore are kaags, with a smaller weyschuit in the right corner.  The vessel further offshore beyond the sandbank with its mainsail partly hoisted is a galjoot. Although the Van de Veldes left the Netherlands for England, probably via the Hoek van Holland to Harwich packet (which ran throughout the 3rd Anglo-Dutch War), at an unknown date in late 1672 or early 1673, this work, with exclusively Dutch small vessels, was probably painted while the artist was still in Amsterdam. It is very much in the tradition of his inshore calms that he painted throughout the 1660s and into the early 1670s: a summer's day with a light breeze just lifting the mast-head pennant flags; cumulus clouds accumulating over the sea; a number of figures engaged in unfrenetic activity; small vessels that are slowly being prepared for a gentle departure, with a figure hauling up the foresail of the left-most kaag. Usually Van de Velde has a figure in the foreground pointing: here three of the four men in or next to the rowing vessel in the left foreground are doing so, perhaps pointing out to the galjoot further out where she should anchor. 

Three other versions of this composition are recorded by Michael Robinson, of which at least one shows substantial differences. Robinson noted that the present picture is 'much better painted than any other versions', and he considered it to be painted 'substantially by the Younger, 1672'. 

To judge by his sale catalogue, Henry Hirsch's collection comprised almost equal numbers of Dutch landscapes and genre pictures and English portraits (the only picture that might have been an exception, a genre painting catalogued by Christie's as a signed work by the Le Nain brothers, is Dutch after all: the magnificent Jan Miense Molenaer now in the National Gallery, London). A further sale of his pictures took place in 1934, following his death.