A Brisk Breeze

The Dutch marine painter Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633–1707) paints three small cargo ships struggling against the choppy conditions, while warships sail in the distance. In the seventeenth century, Holland was a powerful seafaring nation, with a formidable navy and the largest merchant fleet in Europe. Dutch art collectors greatly prized seascapes such as this, and insisted on extreme accuracy in the depiction of the smallest fishing boat to the largest vessel. 

Van de Velde was the leading marine artist of the seventeenth century, specialising exclusively in this type of painting. He came from an artistic family: his father Willem van de Velde the Elder (1610/11–93) was also a maritime painter, and both men were talented draughtsmen. Willem the Younger came to London from the Netherlands in the early 1670s, becoming an official court painter in 1677. He often portrayed warships, and frequently favoured calm scenes over dramatic maritime weather. The smaller vessels and choppier waves in this painting mark something of a departure from his more typical work.