Ships off the Coast

c. 1652

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 60.6 cm × width 84 cm
outer size: depth 8.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, lower left, on a log: I G L

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of three horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 18.5, 19.8 and 21.6 cm), approx. 1 cm thick. A wooden strip (approx. 0.7 cm) was added to the bottom at a later date. The reverse is bevelled at the top and bottom and on the left, and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1635. The panel could have been ready for use by 1646, but a date in or after 1652 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, beige ground extends up to the edges of the support. It consists of yellow and brown earth pigments and some white pigment.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was built up from the back to the front in one or two thin layers, and mostly wet in wet. The main outlines of the ships were reserved in the sea and sky, whereas the details of the rigging were added on top of the sky. The ground shows through the thin grey paint of the wood of the two vessels in the foreground. Small adjustments were made to the positions of the rigging, sails and the blue flag on the boat on the left, as can be seen both with the naked eye and with infrared reflectography. A cross-section shows that (what appears to be) smalt was used in the sky. The brushwork is clearly visible and only the highlights in the sea and sky are slightly impasted.
Erika Smeenk-Metz, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 17 December 2011
infrared reflectography: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, 19 January 2012
paint samples: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, nos. SK-A-1383/1-2, 19 January 2012
technical report: E. Smeenk-Metz, RMA, 19 January 2012

Condition

Fair. The panel has become slightly convex. At some point the upper join was reinforced with wooden blocks (no longer present). The paint surface is abraded throughout along the raised grain of the wood. The latter has become prominently visible in the lighter areas of the sky, due to the increased transparency of the paint layer. Many slightly discoloured retouchings are visible, especially in the sky and along the joins. The varnish has yellowed slightly and shows matte spots in the retouchings.

Conservation

W. Hesterman, 1980: complete restoration

Provenance

…; from Jonkheer Jacob Eduard van Heemskerck van Beest (1828-1894), Utrecht, The Hague and Dalfsen, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 3924), with the rest of his collection, 1878; transferred to the museum, as ‘Unknown master’, March 1887; on loan to the Nederlandsch Scheepvaart Museum, Amsterdam, October 1921-January 1931

Object number: SK-A-1383

The artist

Jacob Gerritsz Loef (? Enkhuizen c. 1607 - ? Enkhuizen c. 1680)

It is not known where or when exactly Jacob Gerritsz Loef was born, nor who his parents were. In a notarized document of 7 February 1648 he stated that he was about 41 years old, which would give a date of birth around 1607. He is regularly registered in Enkhuizen between 1628 and 1680, where the surname Loef combined with ‘Jacob’ and ‘Gerrit’ do not otherwise appear. Although the name of Loef is to be found in both Enkhuizen and Hoorn, it may have been borrowed from maritime jargon and adopted by the artist at an early date. In that case, the many mentions of Jacob Gerritsz in the Enkhuizen archives could also be references to him. There is no information on who his teacher was. Only a few of his paintings are dated, the earliest being from 1643,¹ the last from 1660.² Nothing else can be said with certainty about his life, and for a long time he went under the ad hoc name of Monogrammist IGL until his real name was revealed by two fully signed works that surfaced suddenly and formed the basis for the attribution of the monogrammed pictures.³

Loef’s small oeuvre runs to some 50 paintings, all of them marines, mostly of ships in storms or high winds. Some have biblical subjects, such as a Christ on the Sea of Galilee.⁴ Scenes that still betray the influence of Jan Porcellis will be early ones. Others that stand apart for the tender, bright colouring borrowed from Simon de Vlieger and Bonaventura Peeters are probably later. There is also a debt to Reinier Nooms and Jacob Bellevois in Loef’s oeuvre. The latter pictures, together with those containing stylistic features reminiscent of Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraten and Ludolf Bakhuizen, should be regarded as late works.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2022

References
U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXVII, Leipzig 1950, p. 419; B.J.A. Renckens, ‘Monogrammist IGL = Jacob Gerritsz. Loef’, Oud Holland 73 (1958), pp. 169-77; L.J. Bol, Holländische Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts nahe den grossen Meistern: Landschaften und Stilleben, Braunschweig 1969, pp. 209, 210, 335, note 414; Giltaij in J. Giltaij and J. Kelch (eds.), Praise of Ships and the Sea: The Dutch Marine Painters of the 17th Century, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Berlin (Bode-Museum) 1996-97, p. 211; De Beer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, LXXXV, Munich/Leipzig 2015, p. 148

Entry

A Dutch three-master is riding close-hauled off what appears to be a dune landscape. It is followed by a small gaff-rigged boat with a leeboard and further on the right in the middle ground a square-sterned ship with half its sails set is heading towards the viewer. Between them is a flute and in the background more three-masters can be seen. It is not clear whether the large vessel in the foreground is a merchantman or a man-of-war convoying merchant fleets.

De Beer detected the influence of Reinier Nooms in the colourful and linearly rendered three-master in the foreground of this painting by Jacob Gerritsz Loef.⁵ Since that artist made most of his pictures in the 1650s that would be the earliest decade for the present work. The slender and thus later type of ship with a lower stern does not contradict that date. The dendrochronology is also consistent with an origin in the 1650s, since it shows that the support was most likely ready for use by 1652. Interestingly, there is a literal repetition of this vessel on a slightly smaller scale in a panel by Loef of roughly the same size.⁶ This sort of close reuse of motifs by marine artists has been noted before in the case of a few who specialized in pen paintings, such as Experiens Sillemans,⁷ Willem van de Velde I and Heerman Witmont.⁸ However, Loef did so on several occasions as well. A three-master with all its sails reefed except the fore one features in two of his seascapes.⁹ Moreover, in two works in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, which were probably conceived as a pair, there is an almost identical ship. It is up against the left edge in the one picture and is repeated in the centre of the putative companion piece.¹⁰ More such examples are common in Loef’s oeuvre.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

B.J.A. Renckens, ‘Monogrammist IGL = Jacob Gerritsz. Loef’, Oud Holland 73 (1958), pp. 169-77, esp. pp. 170, 172, 175; De Beer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, LXXXV, Munich/Leipzig 2015, p. 148

Collection catalogues

1887, p. 73, no. 590 (as Dutch School); 1903, p. 182, no. 1650 (as Monogrammist mid-17th century); 1976, p. 351, no. A 1383

Citation

Eddy Schavemaker, 2022, 'Jacob Gerritz. Loef, Ships off the Coast, c. 1652', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8922

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