Seascape with rough sea

This 1656 seascape in rough sea conditions, once held in the Führermuseum collection assembled under the Nazi cultural programme, entered the postwar restitution process along with thousands of other works seized or purchased under duress during the Third Reich. Its current institutional status reflects the ongoing work of postwar recovery and restitution of cultural property. As an early Bakhuizen canvas of 1656, it stands near the beginning of his painting career and shows him developing the rough-sea vocabulary he would perfect over the following decades. The Führermuseum collection, planned for Linz, drew heavily on Dutch and Flemish holdings from European collections, as these were considered quintessentially Northern European and therefore desirable within the ideological framework of Nazi cultural policy.

Oil on canvas, painted when Bakhuizen was in his early twenties and still absorbing the lessons of Amsterdam's marine painting tradition. The sea surface shows the influence of earlier Dutch marine painters — Jan Porcellis and Simon de Vlieger in particular — in its use of grey-green tones and relatively broad wave forms. The sky treatment already shows a nascent confidence in atmospheric cloud modelling that would develop into one of his signature strengths.