Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 144 cm × width 279 cm
outer size: depth 14 cm (support incl. frame)
overall: weight 60 kg
Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom
The Amsterdam Four-Master ‘De Hollandse Tuyn’ and Other Ships on their Return from Brazil under the Command of Paulus van Caerden
c. 1605 - c. 1640
Inscriptions
- signature, top right, on a flag: Vroom
Technical notes
The support, a plain-weave canvas, has been lined. Cusping is visible on all sides. A white ground was followed by thin paint layers for the sky, sea and foreground. The figures and ships were executed in more opaque paint. Impasto was used for highlights, particularly in the waves. There are a few pentimenti. A figure was painted out in the group on the right, just to the left of the boat. Small changes are visible in the positioning of the principal figure in the centre of the canvas.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 17 November 2004
Condition
Poor. There are large areas of abrasion, particularly in the sky. The entire painting shows numerous small losses and many retouchings, and has a discoloured and irregularly applied
varnish.
Conservation
- W.A. Hopman, 1889: canvas lined
Provenance
...; recorded in East India House, Amsterdam in the mid-19th century;1...; transferred to the museum from the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1887
Object number: SK-A-1361
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom (Haarlem c. 1566 - Haarlem 1640)
According to Karel van Mander in his lengthy account of Hendrick Vroom’s life, the artist was born in Haarlem in 1566. He began his career as a decorator of delftware, his father’s craft. A document of 1634 reveals that he learned ‘art’ in Delft. He travelled to Spain and Italy in his youth, remaining away from home for more than five years. While he was in Rome he met Paulus Bril, who encouraged him to start painting and gave him lessons. Between around 1585 and 1587 he was in the service of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici. His journey back to the Dutch Republic took him through Venice, Milan, Turin, Lyon, Paris and Rouen.
Back in Haarlem he married Joosgen Cornelisdr Gans, but he was soon travelling again. Around 1591 he went to Gdansk, where his uncle Frederick Henricksz was city architect. According to Van Mander he made an altarpiece there (now probably lost), and his uncle taught him the rules of perspective. He then set off for Spain again but was shipwrecked and returned to his native Haarlem in 1592, where he remained for the rest of his life.
From the moment he got back, Vroom started making tapestry designs and painting marines. A series of ten tapestry designs traced the battle between the English and the Spanish Armada.2 Another major series of tapestries he designed is preserved in Middelburg Abbey. Vroom made his earliest known dated painting in 1599, The Return to Amsterdam of the Second Expedition to the East Indies, 19 July 1599 (SK-A-2858). His earlier paintings are lost.
Van Mander describes and explains the origins of the new genre of marine painting as follows. ‘Returned home he [Vroom] continued, on the advice of the painters there, making pieces with ships, and gradually he got better and better at making them. And since there is much sea-faring in Holland, the public also started to take great pleasure in these little ships.’
Vroom painted historical naval battles, ships’ portraits and views of maritime towns like Hoorn, Amsterdam and Vlissingen. His highly detailed depictions soon brought him fame, enabling him to ask very high prices for them. Van Mander also says that he was highly productive, with the result that he earned a fortune from his work.
Vroom’s two sons, Cornelis (c. 1590/91-1661) and Frederik (c. 1600-67), both became painters. According to Houbraken, Jan Porcellis (before c. 1584-1632) was apprenticed to Hendrick Vroom. Given the similarities between Vroom’s work and that of Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen (before 1577-1633), it is assumed that he too was a pupil of Vroom’s.
Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007
References
Van Mander 1604, fols. 287r-88v; Ampzing 1621, [p. 33]; Schrevelius 1648, pp. 386-89; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 146-47; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 213; Von Wurzbach II, 1910, pp. 833-34; Bredius II, 1916, pp. 659-61, 667-79, VII, 1921, p. 274; Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, pp. 581-82; Russell 1983, pp. 91-140, 204-11; Ruurs in Miedema II, 1995, pp. 226-38; Giltaij in Rotterdam-Berlin 1996, p. 79; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 332-37
Entry
The centrepiece of this painting is a remarkably large four-master, of which there were only two in the Republic’s fleet around 1600. The arms of Amsterdam on one of the flags identify it as De Hollandse Tuyn, which was built in Amsterdam, whereas one of the other ships, De Leeuw, was from Rotterdam.3 In 1603, Paulus van Caerden sailed to Brazil in De Hollandse Tuyn to fight the Spanish, and returned two years later. He is probably the man who is being welcomed on the beach by a number of dignitaries.4 It is not clear exactly where this event is taking place.
Although undated, the painting may have been made around 1605, the year in which the expedition returned. De Hollandse Tuyn was sold to Tuscany in 1606, so Vroom probably painted the scene before that happened. It is as if the artist is viewing the scene from an imaginary, high vantage point. He used this device at both the beginning and end of his career, so unfortunately it is of no help in establishing the date.
It is possible that the work was commissioned by the Amsterdam Admiralty, since some of the contents of East India House originally came from the Admiralty’s conference building.5 It is less plausible that it was commissioned by the Dutch East India Company, because De Hollandse Tuyn never sailed in one of its fleets.6
Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007
See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements
This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 335.
Literature
Van Luttervelt 1957b; Keyes 1975, I, p. 29; Russell 1983, p. 155
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 186, no. 1599 (as The Return of Houtman’s Expedition to the East Indies, August 1597); 1903, p. 292, no. 2606; 1934, p. 311, no. 2606; 1960, p. 335, no. 2606; 1976, p. 592, A 1361 (as The Amsterdam Four-Master ‘De Hollandse Tuyn’ and Other Ships Entering the IJ on their Return from Brazil under Command of Paulus van Caerden); 2007, no. 335
Citation
E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Hendrik Cornelisz. Vroom, The Amsterdam Four-Master ‘De Hollandse Tuyn’ and Other Ships on their Return from Brazil under the Command of Paulus van Caerden, c. 1605 - c. 1640', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6500
(accessed 21 September 2024 09:54:31).