Lot 133: Hendrick Cornelisz. Vroom , Haarlem circa 1563 - 1640 A Dutch two-master in a stiff breeze before a Dutch coastal town, possibly Den Briel oil on panel

oil on panel

measurements note 29.5 by 61.2 cm.; 11 5/8 by 24 in.

In the collection of the same family since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century.

PROPERTY FROM A FRENCH PRIVATE COLLECTION
Hendrick Vroom was the great pioneer of Dutch marine painting and the leading Netherlandish painter of his time in this genre. Van Mander records that he began his career as a decorator of Delftware, although he soon embarked upon extensive travels in Italy, Spain, Poland and England. During this time he was employed by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici in Florence for two years, and in England by Lord High Admiral, Charles, 2υnd Baron Howard of Effingham (1536-1624), for whom he designed a series of tapestries, illustrating the 1588 victory of the British navy over the Spanish Armada and which hung in the House of Lords until destroyed by fire in 1834. After his return to Haarlem Vroom, who was the only marine painter available, was commissioned by numerous sources to provide painted records or mementos of Dutch ships prior to their departure to distant lands and it is probable that the present work is one such record or 'portrait' of a single ship. Such 'portraits' are fairly numerous in both his paintings and drawings, and indeed the vast majority of them show a three-master side-on in a stiff breeze, with a distant shore beyond, sometimes topographical but often fantasy. An extremely similar composition, signed and dated 1614, on canvas, of larger dimensions and which appears to depict the same town at the right, was with B. Koetser, London in 1972 (see Witt library mount). A drawing in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, representing a three-master trailing a dinghy should also be noted.υ1 1. See M. Russell, Visions of the Sea. Hendrick C. Vroom and the Origins of Dutch Marine Painting, Leiden 1983, p. 143, reproduced fig. 125.