Object data
oil on canvas
support: height 118 cm × width 151 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)
Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, Cornelis Hendriksz Vroom
Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the English Coast, 3 October 1602
1617
Inscriptions
- signature and date, top centre on the flag: VROOM 1617
Technical notes
The support, a plain-weave canvas, has been lined. The tacking edges have not been preserved. The paint was applied in thin layers over a white ground. The figures in the galleys are more sketchy and opaque than those in the rest of the painting.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 17 November 2004
Condition
Poor. The lining is unstable and is coming loose. The background is severely abraded and obscured by discoloured areas of retouching.
Conservation
- W.A. Hopman, 1874: canvas lined, varnish regenerated
- H. Plagge, 1961: restored
Provenance
...; ? estate inventory 1632, Oude Hof, The Hague, no. 244 (‘schilderie van Vroom daer de schepen met de galeyen vechten’);1...; first recorded in the museum, 7 December 18002
Object number: SK-A-460
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.3 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
Cornelis Hendricksz Vroom (Haarlem c. 1590/91 - Haarlem 1661)
The year of Cornelis Vroom’s birth can be deduced from a document of February 1649 in which he declared himself to be ‘about 58 years old’. His father and teacher was the famous marine painter Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom. Cornelis Vroom’s earliest dated work is a marine of 1615.4 Around 1620 he abandoned marine painting in favour of landscapes. His earliest work in this genre is from 1622.5 Willem Buytewech and Esaias and Jan van de Velde influenced his early landscape oeuvre, which is also often reminiscent of Adam Elsheimer’s work. Although he probably joined much earlier, the first record of his membership in the painters’ guild in Haarlem is from 1635. By 1641 he withdrew from the guild, but continued painting in Haarlem. In 1638 Vroom received payment for executing the landscapes in paintings by Paulus Bor6 and Moyses van Wtenbrouck for Frederik Hendrik’s hunting palace of Honselaarsdijk. At the start of his career he apparently collaborated with his father,7 and he continued to do so with other artists throughout his life. Samuel Ampzing mentioned him in 1621, and sang his praises in 1628. Theodoor Schrevelius placed him above all other Haarlem landscape painters.
Jonathan Bikker, 2007
References
Ampzing 1621, fol. E3; Ampzing 1628, p. 368; Schrevelius 1648, p. 389; Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, p. 581; Keyes 1975, I, pp. 13-16; Giltaij in Rotterdam-Berlin 1996, p. 95; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 328-31
Entry
It used to be thought that this was a depiction of the Battle of Gibraltar.8 It is far more likely, though, that it is of a battle that was fought in the English Channel in October 1602. Spanish galleys regularly appeared off the coast of Flanders and in the Western Scheldt (the estuary of the river Scheldt), menacing Dutch naval and mercantile shipping. With the aid of some English ships, the Dutch succeeded in ramming and sinking two galleys. The others escaped and were attacked again in 1603.9 The Dutch ship running down the galleys in the foreground is probably the Halve Maan commanded by Vice-Admiral Johan Adriaensz Cant, which has rammed the Spanish Pradill.10 In the background are the cliffs and castle of Dover. The half-naked galley crews consisted of slaves and prisoners of war. Memories of naval victories over Spain were kept alive both during and after the Twelve Years’ Truce.11 Paintings by Vroom and others from this period often commemorate both those earlier victories as well as fairly minor skirmishes like the one in this painting. It is possible that it is based on prints of 1603 by Hans Rem of Antwerp.12
The painting is signed and dated ‘Vroom 1617’, and was formerly thought to be by Hendrick Vroom alone,13 but Keyes has convincingly shown it to be a joint work by Hendrick and his son Cornelis,14 with Hendrick painting the large man-of-war and the waves, and Cornelis the galleys. The latter do indeed bear a close resemblance to those in The Naval Battle between a Spanish Galleon and Turkish Galleys, a signed painting of 1615 by Cornelis Vroom.15 In no other work by Hendrick Vroom does one find so many figures. The style in which they are painted clearly differs from that of those on the large ship, and the palette is more varied. Cornelis’s are sketchily indicated and executed with more opaque paint.
This painting was one of the earliest in the Rijksmuseum’s collection, being on view in the Nationale Konst-Gallery in Huis ten Bosch back in 1800.16 Many of the exhibits there had belonged to the House of Orange, as this painting may have done. It is possible that it is identical with a ‘painting by Vroom in which ships do battle with galleys’ that was an overmantel in Prince Frederik Hendrik’s bedchamber in the Oude Hof (Old Court) in the Hague.17 If that is the case, it is likely that it was intended not for Frederik Hendrik but for Prince Maurits, who appears to have had a particular liking for maritime scenes.18 Maurits was Admiral-General of the Republic, and it is possible that one of the admiralties presented it to him.19
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. 337.
Literature
Keyes 1975, I, pp. 41-42, II, p. 173, no. P 2; Russell 1983, pp. 160-61; Minneapolis etc. 1990, pp. 193-95, no. 49; Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, pp. 331-33, no. 172
Collection catalogues
1809, p. 79, no. 339 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, Admiral Van Heemskerk Running Down Spanish Galleys off the Coast of Gibraltar; 1843, p. 66, no. 342 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, Admiral Van Heemskerk Running Down Spanish Galleys off the Coast of Gibraltar; ‘in good condition’); 1887, p. 186, no. 1597 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, The Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607); 1903, p. 292, no. 2604 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, The Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607); 1934, p. 310, no. 2604 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, The Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607); 1960, p. 335, no. 2603 F 1 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, The Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607); 1976, p. 592, no. A 460 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the Flemish Coast); 1992, p. 91, no. A 460 (as Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the Flemish Coast); 2007, no. 337
Citation
E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Hendrik Cornelisz. Vroom and Cornelis Hendriksz. Vroom, Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the English Coast, 3 October 1602, 1617', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6501
(accessed 21 September 2024 02:02:49).