Dutch Sailing Boats in a Rough Sea

The visual drama of Dutch ships under sail in rough conditions was Bakhuizen's most commercially successful subject, and this 1695 canvas in the Ferens Art Gallery at Hull exemplifies the formula he perfected over four decades. By the mid-1690s Bakhuizen was the undisputed master of the Dutch marine tradition — the van de Veldes had departed for London, Willem van de Velde the Younger was working for Charles II, and the Amsterdam market for storm-at-sea canvases looked to Bakhuizen as its premier supplier. The Ferens Art Gallery assembled its Dutch and Flemish holdings partly through the nineteenth-century Yorkshire trade in continental pictures, and this work represents a quality level consistent with Bakhuizen's most sought-after productions. Rough-sea scenes carried a dual appeal in the Dutch Republic: they celebrated the maritime power on which Dutch prosperity depended while simultaneously evoking the mortal risks taken by sailors whose labour sustained that prosperity. The tension between threat and mastery is the governing emotional content of almost every major Bakhuizen canvas.

The painting is executed in oil on canvas with Bakhuizen's mature handling: warm, toned ground showing through in the mid-tones of the sea, cold greys and blue-greens in the wave troughs, and brilliant white foam rendered in impasto strokes applied over dry underlayers. The rigging of the vessels is drawn in fine, dark lines over the sky with evident confidence, suggesting Bakhuizen's well-documented habit of drawing on the water to observe ships at close quarters.