Willem van de Velde the Elder

In an album of drawings primarily by William van de Velde the Elder and the Younger

The level of detail in this massive, panoramic drawing -- the largest of all the Van de Veldes in the Northumberland collection -- is truly astonishing.  More than one hundred distinct ships can be clearly seen, and there are fragments of many more behind.  In the hands of any other artist, such a scene could easily have degenerated into a confusing jumble of sails, masts and hulls, or become dry and repetitive, but Van de Velde's great gift was to portray these vast assemblies of vessels with life and animation, but also with total clarity in the rendering of space, recession and perspective.  In his tireless quest for accurate, first-hand information about everything he painted or drew, Van de Velde sailed in and amongst the fleets, even in battle, in his own small boat, often identified in his drawings as 'mijn galjoot', which is clearly visible in the foreground of the present scene.

The late Michael Robinson thought that this monumental, panoramic drawing probably depicts the Dutch fleet in the run-up to the Battle of Solebay, the first encounter in the Third Anglo-Dutch War.  Between 1652 and 1674 the Dutch and English engaged in three maritime wars stemming largely from their two nations' commercial rivalries.  The Treaty of Breda, signed on 31 July/10 August 1667, marked the end of the second war, but the trade war continued.  In 1670 the French and English allied themselves against the Dutch and signed the Treaty of Dover.  They individually declared war against the Dutch Republic in 1672, and in May Louis XIV invaded the Netherlands, backed by the might of the English navy.  William of Orange led the ground war against the invaders while Admiral de Ruyter commanded the fleet.  The first naval encounter in the Third Anglo-Dutch War was the Battle of Solebay, on 11 June 1672, when the Dutch fleet attacked the combined French and English fleets at Sole Bay, off the Suffolk coast. 

At the opening of the Third Anglo-Dutch War in 1672, Van de Velde was still living in Amsterdam, but the correspondence of Pieter Blaeu reveals that he was absent from the city for three weeks at the time of the battle of Solebay, which he clearly witnessed at first hand.  There are many drawings by Van de Velde showing the lead-up to the battle, and also various moments in the action, one of the finest being the mighty, panoramic drawing that was sold from the Estate of John Pierpont Morgan, 2nd, in 2006, as part of the only other major group of Van de Velde drawings to come onto the market in the last 30 years.¹  Robinson felt, however, that few of these drawings were actually completed on the spot: the most notable exceptions he believed to be three monumental drawings in the British Museum.  Others, such as the extremely large sheet in Rotterdam (inv. MB 1866/T91), were probably made at a later date, after the artist moved to England. 

Many of Van de Velde's surviving panoramic drawings are based on counterproofs, taken from other drawings perhaps made on the spot, which the artist has subsequently worked up into a second, reversed version of the original.  As the inscription in the corner indicates, the present drawing is an example of such a reworked counterproof, although in this case the reworking in graphite and black chalk is so extensive and detailed that the end result is another fully-fledged drawing.  Only the inscription in the corner, and the fact that the written indentifications of some of the ships depicted appear rather faintly and in reverse, indicates the process by which this drawing came into being. 

Although the outcome of the Battle of Solebay was ambiguous - it was never really finished, as thick fog rolled in after the first day of fighting - there seems to have been a rather surprising demand in England for depictions of it.  At least two fascinating series of tapestries showing, from higher viewpoints, the different stages of the battle, were commissioned from Francis and Thomas Poyntz in 1674-6 and 1688 respectively, and woven partly at Mortlake and partly at the Great Wardrobe in Hatton Garden.  Drawings such as the above-mentioned sheet in Rotterdam probably relate to projects and commissions such as these, and indeed on one drawing of the battle, in the University Print Room, Leiden, Van de Velde has actually noted in his inscription that the events are as in another drawing, "but arranged with a higher horizon at the wish and command of the King and the Duke to make it suitable for a tapestry.."²

1.  New York, Sotheby's, 25 January 2006, lot 13 
2.  Robinson, op. cit., 1958, p. 10, note 1