Willem van de Velde the Elder

Dr. Einar Perman (1893-1976), Stockholm, by descent to the present owners

Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden. Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, cat. 118

This boldly drawn, animated study of a group of fisherfolk on the shore, conversing while sitting on their boats and baskets, and organising their nets and catch, belongs to a group of similar study sheets, all clearly by the same hand. These went under a variety of attributions, including Aelbert Cuyp and Jan Porcellis, until 1937, when Sir Bruce Ingram first proposed that they were in fact by Willem van de Velde the Elder, an attribution that has since gained universal acceptance.¹ In a recent Amsterdam exhibition catalogue, Remmelt Daalder and Jeroen van der Vliet suggest that Van de Velde began to make these figure studies in around 1655, perhaps to provide prototypes for foreground figures in his pen paintings.²  

Other drawings from this group are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and elsewhere.³  

1. 2nd Exhibition of Masters of Maritime Art, exhib. cat., London, P.&D. Colnaghi & Co., 1937, pp. 23-30
2. Willem van de Velde & Son, exhib. cat., Amsterdam, National Maritime Museum, 2021-22, p. 88
3. Art Institute of Chicago, inv. 1922.1889; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, inv. PD.817-1963; Greenwich, National Maritime Museum, inv. PAE5170, PAE5173, PAE5174