Lot 166: - Jan Theunisz. Blankerhoff , Alkmaar 1628-1669 Amsterdam a river estuary with dutch shipping in a stiff breeze, a lighthouse to the left oil on canvas

signed with monogram lower right: BH oil on canvas

measurements note 99.5 by 197.5 cm.; 39 1/4 by 77 3/4 in.

Jean-Isidore Harispe, Count Harispe (1768-1855), created Maréchal of France in 1851.

Blankerhoff sailed with the Dutch fleet on two occasions during the Anglo-Dutch war of 1664-67; in 1665 and again the following year. Three years later in 1669 he joined Count van Waldeck's fleet in an expedition to expel the Turks from Candia. These first hand experiences lent his paintings an unusual degree of conviction and detail, and his biographer Houbraken praised his works for their 'wonderful spontaneity and impeccable accuracy'. They also lent him his nickname 'Jan Maat' or 'Jack Tar'. According to Houbraken, his more formal commissions, received from the Amsterdam Admiralty and elsewhere, and which won him considerable public acclaim, were apparently painted in a more 'detailed and polished' manner, others in a freer technique. His best work is characterised by a cool grey tonality and attention to atmosphere as here. A Master in the Guild of St. Luke in Alkmaar in 1649, he died young only twenty years later. We are grateful to Sabine Giepmans of the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie for endorsing the attribution to Blankerhoff on the basis of photographs.