Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 152.1 cm × width 276 cm
outer size: depth 8.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Hendrick van Anthonissen
1653
oil on canvas
support: height 152.1 cm × width 276 cm
outer size: depth 8.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Support The plain-weave canvas has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved and there is a selvedge at the top. Cusping is vaguely visible on the left. Judging by the crack pattern the bars of the original strainer were approx. 5-7 cm wide, with a thinner vertical crossbar and four diagonal corner pieces approx. 3 cm wide. At the top and bottom and on the right the picture plane is folded over the current stretcher, reducing the original height of the composition by approx. 1.9 cm and the width by approx. 1 cm.
Preparatory layers The double ground extends over the original tacking edges on all sides, almost up to the right edge of the canvas, and up to the ones at the top and bottom. The first layer is a dark brown-orange consisting of orange, yellow and black pigment particles. The second ground is a dark grey containing white and black pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the original tacking edges on all sides. The composition was built up from the front to the back and from dark to light, without reserves. The water in the middle ground overlaps the brown foreground and parts of the fortification. A cross-section shows that the boats were sketched in with a dilute brown over the water (without the waves), and that the figures were applied over this underpainting before the boats were completed. The masts, ropes and flags were added on top of the water and sky. The highlights of the waves were among the last painted. The highest range of blue mountains was executed over the sky. The fortification was later expanded for about 2 cm on either side, over the finished water and waves.
Gwen Tauber, 2022
Fair. There is a patch at lower right on the back of the lining canvas. The canvas hangs slack on its stretcher. A marked crack pattern is particularly disturbing in the sky. The full length of the bottom edge is overpainted, varying from 2 to 9 cm in height, and has many small losses with a few local fills and retouchings throughout.
…; fl. 117, to the museum, through the mediation of Jan Eduard van Someren-Brand (1856-1904), Amsterdam, as A Dutch Squadron Attacking a Reinforced Portuguese Port on the Brazilian Coast, December 1903
Object number: SK-A-2126
Copyright: Public domain
Hendrick van Anthonissen (Amsterdam 1605 - Amsterdam 1656)
Hendrick van Anthonissen, who went by the name of Hendrick Aerts until 1632, was baptized on 29 May 1605 in Amsterdam as a son of the marine painter Aert Anthonisz, who came from Antwerp. He would have learned the basic principles of art from his father, but it is known from the archives that he was studying with Jan Porcellis in 1626, so that is where he would have completed his training. In 1630 Van Anthonissen married Judith Flessiers, Porcellis’s sister-in-law. Shortly after his teacher’s death in 1632 the couple moved to Leiden together with Janneke Flessiers, Porcellis’s widow, and it turns out that they had settled in Leiderdorp in 1635. The family moved back to Amsterdam around 1639. Van Anthonissen is documented in Rotterdam in 1645, and around 1651 he was staying in Rijnsburg, near Leiden. However, in all those years he was probably living in Amsterdam, which is where he died and was buried on 12 November 1656. His son and pupil Arnoldus van Anthonissen (1631-1703) also specialized in marine painting.
Hendrick van Anthonissen’s small oeuvre is made up entirely of paintings, mostly marines and beach scenes. Dated works are rare. His earliest one is from 1631,1 while his last of 1653 is in the Rijksmuseum.2 His initial pictures are in a refined monochrome, often grey palette with close attention to a convincing rendering of atmospheric effects. That reflects the influence of Porcellis, with whose works his own were already being confused in the seventeenth century. There is more colour in his paintings from the 1640s onwards, as well as growing evidence of the influence of Simon de Vlieger.
Eddy Schavemaker, 2022
References
Bredius, ‘Johannes Porcellis: Zijn leven, zijn werk’, Oud Holland 23 (1905-06), pp. 69-73, esp. p. 70; Moes in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, I, Leipzig 1907, p. 553; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, pp. 348, 363; ibid., II, 1916, pp. 423, 615, 617-19, 626-34, 645-46; ibid., VII, 1921, pp. 1, 176, 178; L.J. Bol, Die holländische Marinemalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig 1973, pp. 105-11; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders in de Noordelijke Nederlanden in het begin van de Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Haarlem 1987, pp. 389-99, 404-05, 420; Trauzeddel in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, IV, Munich/Leipzig 1992, p. 249; Giltaij in J. Giltaij and J. Kelch (eds.), Lof der zeevaart: De Hollandse zeeschilders van de 17de eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Berlin (Bode-Museum) 1996-97, pp. 129, 203-05; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Antwerp 1997, p. 293; E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, p. 283
This is Hendrick van Anthonissen’s largest painting by far, and is also his last known dated work. The fact that he was the artist was only discovered when his signature was revealed by cleaning shortly after the acquisition, and a little later the subject was identified by De Balbian Verster.3
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) fought bitter battles with the Portuguese in order to dominate trade with the East Indies. When Antonio van Diemen was appointed governor-general in 1636 he imposed an annual blockade near the Bay of Goa – the Portuguese headquarters in India – to make it impossible for their merchantmen to sail out. On 25 July 1639 a squadron of seven ships under the command of Admiral Cornelis Simonsz van der Veer departed from Batavia, followed by two yachts on 6 August. News reached the fleet, which had assembled just off Goa on 15 September, that the governor of the Portuguese post had died on 6 June and that his successor had sailed northward to put down an uprising by the local population. It was also rumoured that there were three unarmed galleons in the Bay of Goa Velha (Old Goa) by Fort Mormugao at the mouth of the river Zuari. Van der Veer decided to capture or destroy them in a surprise attack, which took place on 30 September. We are well-informed about the campaign from the journal of the admiral’s flagship preserved in the VOC archives.4 There are also two private eyewitness accounts, one on the Portuguese side, the other a Dutch report that was published as a pamphlet in 1640 and was also translated into English that year.5
In view of the large size of Van Anthonissen’s painting and its unusual subject, it is likely that it was made on commission. It is certainly odd that it was awarded so many years after the event, by which time the principal character, Admiral Van der Veer, was already dead. Given the accuracy of the picture and the detailed record of the fighting, the work must have been ordered by a person or body with some involvement in the action and was thus in a position to serve as a source of information for the artist. Van Anthonissen’s account is precise in both its broad outline and numerous details. While the other Dutch ships have already sailed into the bay, the Middelburch and Nieuw Haerlem in the left foreground, identified by their city coats of arms on the foredecks, are under fire from the fort. Both were heavily laden with trade goods, which is why they brought up the rear after the smaller vessels had hoisted flags to signal that there was safe passage to deep water. The Nieuw Haerlem was the flagship and is recognizable as such from the admiral’s pennant flying from the main topmast. But Admiral Van der Veer, who had initially sailed into the bay aboard the Zierikzee, can be seen here in a rowing boat, wearing his sash and giving orders with a gesture of his arm. The Dutch reports do indeed state that he commanded the action from a launch. Further off in the background are the cumbersome shapes of the three Portuguese galleons: São Boaventura in the middle, armed but not ready to sail, flanked by the Bom Jesus and the São Sebastião, which lay unarmed in the bay. Van Anthonissen depicted them without cannon, yards or sails, and they are being overmastered by Dutch soldiers clambering up over the hull to the deck from rowing boats lying alongside.
There are more details showing that the artist was very well informed indeed. The fact that the Middelburch anchored off the fort is described in the official record, while the statement that the guns from the two unarmed galleons were lying on the beach is mentioned in the Portuguese files. Van Anthonissen would also have been able to learn a great deal from an eyewitness, if there was one to hand, but he very probably just consulted written sources. It is not clear whether he saw a copy of the Portuguese report, but it cannot be ruled that the VOC archives had more accounts of the battle than have come down to us. All of them were secret, anyway, and only the company could have given permission for an outsider to see them. De Balbian Verster’s suggestion that the painting was ordered by the VOC is therefore plausible.6 His proposition that it was intended for a meeting room of its board is also very possible, given the work’s size, but cannot be verified. It is uncertain whether the directors or one of the six chambers of the corporation awarded the commission, and it is not even known precisely what was to be seen in the assembly hall of the VOC’s main office, that of Amsterdam.
The composition does not appear to have been copied directly from another visual source with a view of Goa Velha. The company’s chartrooms were anyway amply supplied with cartographic and other material that an artist could have consulted in preparation. A realistic depiction of the fort was evidently felt to be less important, for it appears to be a figment of the artist’s imagination.7
The attack was not depicted again until a good deal later, and without any attempt at topographical accuracy, by Jan Luyken in a print illustrating the account based on the Dutch pamphlet version in the second edition of Lambert van den Bos’s Leeven en daaden der doorluchtigste zee-helden of 1683. Luyken chose a different moment in the battle, namely the explosion of the São Boaventura.8 Although this painting is among Van Anthonissen’s last works, it is in an old-fashioned and slightly naive manner that was nevertheless very suitable for a narrative depiction of what was already almost a historical event. The fact that the artist had to place it in a setting that he did not know at first hand resulted in the landscape and the atmospheric effects being in a rather generalized and not very expressive style.
Eddy Schavemaker, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
J.F.L. de Balbian Verster, ‘De verrassing van Goa (1639)’, Eigen Haard 30 (1904), pp. 423-42, esp. pp. 423-27, 437; F.C. Willis, Die niederländische Marinemalerei, Leipzig 1911, p. 42; R. Preston, Sea and River Painters of the Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century, London 1937, p. 33; L.J. Bol, Die holländische Marinemalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig 1973, p. 111; R. Preston, The Seventeenth Century Marine Painters of the Netherlands, Leigh-on-Sea 1974, p. 1
1904, p. 40, no. 366a; 1934, p. 30, no. 366a; 1960, p. 20, no. 366 B1; 1976, p. 84, no. A 2126
Eddy Schavemaker, 2022, 'Hendrick van Anthonissen, A Dutch Squadron under the Command of Cornelis Simonsz van der Veer Carrying Out a Surprise Attack on Three Portuguese Galleons in the Bay of Goa Velha, 30 September 1639, 1653', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5790
(accessed 10 November 2024 06:35:15).