A Packet-Boat Sailing before the Wind

c. 1640 - c. 1650

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 38.5 cm × width 60 cm
outersize: depth 6 cm (support incl. SK-L-5957)

Inscriptions

signature, with ligated monogram, lower right, on the lee board: PMVLIR

Technical notes

Support The panel consists of two horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 19.5 and 19 cm), approx. 1.1 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks and plane marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1616. The panel could have been ready for use in 1627, but a date in or after 1633 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The smooth double ground extends up to the edges of the support. The first, opaque, creamy white layer has a coarse, powdery texture and primarily fills the grain of the wood. The second, opaque, cool, off-white layer consists of white pigment particles with a minute addition of earth pigments.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support at the top and bottom and on the left, and slightly over the right edge. The hull and sails of the vessel in the foreground were executed first. They were followed by the sky and water, wet in wet, together with the boats in the distance, and then the mast, ropes and figures before the earlier layer was completely dry. Other details like the birds and the fins were placed at the end. The opaque, unctuous paint was applied in a single, smooth, thin layer in a free and sketchy manner, apart from the fine details of the boat, which were done with thin, fluid brushstrokes. The paint is slightly thicker at the edges of the short, expressive brushstrokes, particularly in the paler passages, such as the white clouds and the crests of the waves.
Emma Boyce, 2024

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: W. de Ridder / G. Tauber, RMA, 11 January 1998
paint samples: E. Boyce, RMA, nos. SK-A-2357/1-2, 6 September 2010
technical report: E. Boyce, RMA, 20 September 2010
dendrochronology: P. Klein, RMA, 17 December 2011

Condition

Fair. The lower plank has two horizontal splits running from the left. The ground and paint layers are cracked here and there are some small losses. Others are present around the perimeter of the panel and within the interstices of the wood grain. The paint is abraded throughout and has increased in transparency. Discoloured retouchings are visible along the join. The varnish has significantly yellowed and is uneven, streaky and cracked, and although it retains its gloss it saturates poorly.

Provenance

…; sale, Cornelis Hoogendijk (1866-1911, The Hague) et al., Amsterdam (F. Muller), 28 April 1908 sqq., no. 267, fl. 7,000, to the museum

Object number: SK-A-2357

The artist

Pieter Mulier I (Haarlem c. 1595/1615 - Haarlem 1659/61)

There is no record of Mulier’s date of birth, nor any mention of his age in the archives. His father was the Mennonite weaver Pieter Joostensz, who had fled the southern Netherlands for religious reasons. Based on the year of his first wedding to Maycke de Graet of Haarlem in 1635, and those of his sisters in 1638 and 1645, Mulier may have been born in 1610 or later. It is clear from a notarized document of 30 November 1647 that the artist belonged to the same denomination as his father.

Nothing is known about Mulier’s training, and the single painting of his with the year of execution is from 1639, although the dating is not autograph.¹ He joined the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in or shortly before 1638. In July 1642 he and other members signed a petition to the burgomasters asking them to ban auctions not organized by the guild.

Because he only signed his pictures with ‘PML’ there was soon confusion over his identity, so much so that he features twice in the painters’ register kept between roughly 1669 and 1678 by Jan Sysmus, the Amsterdam city physician, once as Pieter de Vlieger due to an incorrect interpretation of the monogram, and the second time as Mulier (‘Pieter Molier’). Houbraken calls him ‘Pieter Molyn the Elder’. On 3 November 1654 he was ordered to pay a debt that he had run up for beer, and to do so in cash, not paintings, so he may have been going through a difficult period financially. That may also explain why the Haarlem authorities gave him permission in 1654 and again in 1658 to hold a sale of his work. On 26 May 1659 a Pieter Mulier was buried in the Grote Kerk in Haarlem, which may be the artist. He must have died anyway before December 1661, when his wife is called a widow in an archival document.

The guild archives record that Mulier had a pupil called Frederick Cornelissen Ebbekin (dates unknown) in 1640. In that year Frans de Hulst (dates unknown) trained with him as well. He must also have taught his own son Pieter (1637-1701). Mulier specialized in marines and beach scenes, with Hendrick Vroom, Jan Porcellis, Jan van Goyen and Simon de Vlieger as his main sources of inspiration.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2024

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, III, Amsterdam 1721, p. 183; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866, pp. 29, 60, 100, 167; A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, Stads-Doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 8 (1890), pp. 1-17, 217-34, 297-313, esp. p. 305; ibid., 9 (1891), pp. 137-49, esp. pp. 142, 147; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, pp. 4, 63; ibid., II, 1916, pp. 424, 452, 512; ibid., III, 1917, p. 1053; ibid., IV, 1917, pp. 1233, 1238, 1303, 1439, 1440-43; ibid., V, 1918, pp. 1520, 1614, 1635, 1640, 1765; ibid., VI, 1919, p. 1890; ibid., VII, 1921, pp. 163, 295; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXV, Leipzig 1931, p. 259; M.C. Plomp, ‘A Key Drawing by Pieter Mulier the Elder’, Mercury, no. 13/14 (1992), pp. 6-32, esp. pp. 26-27; Giltaij in J. Giltaij and J. Kelch (eds.), Lof der zeevaart: De Hollandse zeeschilders van de 17e eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Berlin (Bode-Museum) 1996-97, pp. 235-38; J.G.C.A. Briels, Vlaamse schilders en de dageraad van Hollands Gouden Eeuw 1585-1630, Antwerp 1997, p. 362; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 254-55; Biesboer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XCI, Munich/Leipzig 2016, p. 239; Van der Veen in G. de Beer, F. Ossing and J. van der Veen, The Golden Age of Dutch Marine Painting: The Inder Rieden Collection, II, Leiden 2019, pp. 439-43

Entry

This spritsail-rigged vessel running before the wind towards the viewer was formerly thought to be a fishing boat, but it is too large for that, has too many people on board, and does not have any fishing gear. It is probably a wijdschip that plied a regular route with passengers.² According to Van der Vliet, the flag flying from its mast is that of Hoorn, which may identify the setting as the Zuiderzee.³ However, as noted by Ter Brugge, the Dordrecht flag looks the same, and it is more likely that Mulier has depicted the South Holland delta, a coastal area with numerous shallows and sandbanks.⁴ This hypothesis is supported by the barrel buoy marking a channel on the right. In addition, the fins rising out of the waves in the right foreground are of dolphins or porpoises, which would more likely be found in the delta region than in the Zuiderzee.⁵

This is a typical example of Mulier’s marines, most of which consist of tonal seascapes with choppy water in which the ships play a subordinate part. It is a perfection of the atmospheric orchestration of light that Jan Porcellis had developed in the 1620s.⁶ The type of composition with a cloudy sky taking up three-quarters of the picture space with a single-master and shadowed waves in the foreground was also invented by Porcellis, in the second half of that decade.⁷ It is very comparable to a painting by the latter in Wuppertal.⁸ As De Beer has observed, this kind of seascape by Mulier also betrays the influence of Jan van Goyen.⁹

The lack of dated works makes it impossible to analyse Mulier’s development as an artist. Keyes placed this Packet-Boat Sailing before the Wind in the 1640s,¹⁰ which agrees with the dendrochronology.¹¹ The dimensions of roughly 38 x 60 centimetres are very common in Mulier’s oeuvre, and are ideal for panoramic marines. This horizontal format was widely available in different sizes and may have been known as a ‘seawater panel’.¹²

Eddy Schavemaker, 2024

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

F.C. Willis, Die niederländische Marinemalerei, Leipzig 1911, p. 61; M.G. Roethlisberger, Cavalier Pietro Tempesta and his Time, Newark 1970, p. 6, no. 58; G.S. Keyes, ‘Pieter Mulier the Elder’, Oud Holland 90 (1976), pp. 230-61, esp. pp. 230-33

Collection catalogues

1909, p. 391, no. 1684a; 1934, p. 201, no. 1684a; 1960, p. 218, no. 1684 B1; 1976, p. 402, no. A 2357 (as Fishing Boat with the Wind in the Sails)

Citation

Eddy Schavemaker, 2024, 'Pieter (I) Mulier, A Packet-Boat Sailing before the Wind, c. 1640 - c. 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.4666

(accessed 13 November 2024 02:53:38).