File:Dutch ships in a breeze RMG BHC0737.tiff

Underneath a cloudy sky a number of ships can be seen sailing off what appears to be a strip of the Dutch coast. The monogram ’DW’ signed on a log drifting in the foreground waves of this seascape remains the only hint to the painter’s identity. This “monogrammist” does not seem to have been a very productive or widely known artist with a recognizable individual style, but the small panel marks a curious point of transition in Dutch marine painting of the first half of the 17th century, between the pictorial concepts of earlier artists such as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom and the achievements of the next generation represented by his pupil Jan Porcellis.

From a viewpoint low above the dark foreground waves, which form the composition’s repoussoir, the beholder’s gaze is drawn into the picture space with the distribution of light and shade as well as the ships’ positions laying out the spatial recession. A small one-master on the left, with its crew struggling to control the main sail, appears to be nearest. Two grand sailing ships can be seen further to the right in the middle ground and in the centre on the horizon. The first is heading across the wind towards the spectator and the second one, which might be a warship, is anchored. Whereas the view is closed off in the right-background by dunes and a characteristically square Dutch church tower, on the left the sea expands beyond the horizon. This is indicated by the presence of two more small crafts on the far left, the latter of them only indicated by the triangular shape of its sail.

Though more colourful than the general style of the tonalist period of the 1630s and 1640s, this composition is very much in line with the work of Porcellis’ followers. This is true not only on a formal level, but also regarding the aspects of the depiction of weather and atmosphere and the embracing of the entire loosely narrative scene. But the three-master seen from port-bow view is curiously depicted from a slightly higher viewpoint, which together with the vessel’s shape suggests a familiarity with the frigates in Vroom’s paintings. This panel might therefore be dated to the 1630s when Vroom was still working, but just as well the motif might be an anachronistic reference of a younger artist.