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A Dutch Ship Passing a Fort RMG BHC0928FXD
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A Dutch Ship Passing a Fort
Abraham Storck was one of several Dutch marine painters who produced fantastical views of Mediterranean ports during the second half of the 17th century. Merchant shipping appears alongside architectural ruins, usually depicted in the crystal-clear colours of Italian art of the period.
In this scene of a Dutch ship passing a port, however, the artist, who has signed his upright format on a block of stone in the right foreground, has adopted a colour scheme of golden browns and ochres. The composition is very clear-cut. The rugged, partly ruined classicist architecture built on a cliff takes up the entire left half of the picture space. Here, the spectator’s gaze is led uphill along a city wall and through a gate towards a massive round tower behind it. In the stage-like foreground a group of men is resting by the harbour wall in the centre and further to the right an elaborate gun barrel has been left by the rocky shore.
The view opens to the sea in the right half of the composition. The Dutch ship is seen just off stern, its masts rising up almost to the height of the tower. Further ships are depicted in the distance. A strong breeze has risen and a fully occupied rowing boat is carefully struggling across the waves in the shade underneath the cliff. The scene is dramatically lit from the left, increasing the theatrical effect of the painting.
Such paintings anticipated the popular 18th-century Italian capriccio. Storck, who was born in 1644, trained and worked with his father and became a member of the Guild of St Luke in Amsterdam. He probably never went to Italy himself, but he would have known Italian scenery and architectural prints and other artists’ paintings. The style of his river and coastal scenes was influenced by fellow Dutch artists Ludolf Bakhuizen, Willem van de Velde, the Younger and Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraten. As can be seen in this painting he showed considerable accuracy in depicting ships' rigging and technical details and great skill depicting the human figure, through characterization and attention to costume and detail. The staffage figures are given an air of ‘banditti’ character, romanticizing the foreign scene if not contrasting it to the Dutch prosperity represented in the leaving ships.
A Dutch ship passing a fort
Set of images depicting various harbors, ports, and piers together with ships, fishing and sailing boats, and all types of haven-like places and views. All large image sets on Picryl.com are made in two steps: First, we picked a set to train AI vision to recognize the feature, and after that, we ran all 25M+ images in our database through an image recognition machine. As usual, all media in the collection belong to the public domain. There is no limitation on the dataset usage - educational, scientific, or commercial.
Ludolf Bakhuizen was a Dutch painter and engraver born in Emden, Germany in 1630. He is best known for his maritime paintings depicting ships at sea, naval battles and coastal scenes. Bakhuizen moved to Amsterdam at a young age and began his career as an engraver. He later turned to painting and became one of the most prominent marine artists of his time. His paintings were highly sought after by wealthy patrons and he received many commissions from the Dutch Navy. Bakhuizen's paintings were characterised by their dramatic compositions, use of light and shadow and attention to detail. He was adept at capturing the movement of waves and the effects of light on water. His works often depicted stormy seas, shipwrecks and battles between ships. In addition to his paintings, Bakhuizen also produced engravings and drawings. He died in Amsterdam in 1708 at the age of 78. Today his works can be found in museums and private collections around the world, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England.
Collection - Harbors
20,000+ Harbors, Havens, Piers and PortsCollection - Ludolf Bakhuizen (1630–1708)
German-born Dutch painter, draughtsman, calligrapher and printmaker. He was the leading Dutch painter of maritime subjects after Willem van de Velde the Elder and the Younger left for England in 1672. He also painted portraits of his family and friends.
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