Object data
oil on panel
support: height 39 cm × width 73 cm
outer size: depth 5.3 cm (support incl. frame)
Cornelis Bol
Naval Battle between Dutch Men-of-War and Spanish Galleys
c. 1633 - c. 1650
Inscriptions
- signature, bottom right on a rock: C. Bol
Technical notes
The support consists of two horizontally grained oak planks and is bevelled on all sides. It has been trimmed slightly at the top. Both planks are from the same tree. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1622. The panel could have been ready for use by 1633, but a date in or after 1639 is more likely. The ground is white. The paint layers are smooth. Impasto was used only for the highlights.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 5 January 2005
Condition
Fair. Just below the join there are three old and stable cracks across the full width of the painting.
Provenance
...; purchased from the dealer C.F. Roos, Amsterdam, by the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 4573), 1870;1 transferred to the museum, 1902
Object number: SK-A-4250
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Cornelis Bol (Antwerp 1589 - Haarlem 1666)
Cornelis Bol was born in Antwerp in 1589 as the son of Philips Bol. He was a pupil of Tobias Verhaecht. In 1611 he was in Haarlem, where he probably studied with Hendrick Vroom. In 1615 he was a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp. Bol often travelled abroad. In 1624 he was living in Paris, and around 1635 in London. He was active in Haarlem in 1637, where he became a member of the Guild of St Luke, to which he gave a large seascape that same year. He was back in London from December 1638 until around 1641, and was then active in Haarlem again. In 1649 he rejoined the guild there, becoming a warden of it in 1655. He was buried in the St Janskerk in Haarlem on 23 October 1666.
Only a few of Bol’s works have survived, almost all of them marines and river views.
Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007
References
Van der Willigen 1866, pp. 22, 27, 74; Von WurzbachI, 1910, pp. 126-27; Thieme/Becker IV, 1910, p. 238; Bol 1973, pp. 52-53; Ro¨mer in Saur XII, 1996, p. 358; Briels 1997, p. 302
Entry
A large Dutch man-of-war is being engaged by several Spanish galleys just off a rocky coast. Bol probably took the subject from Hendrick and Cornelis Vroom, with one possible model being their Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the English Coast, 3 October 1602 of 1617 (SK-A-460). Both paintings show a naval battle close to steep cliffs topped by a castle or fort. Although there are considerable differences between the two compositions, the position of the central warship is almost identical. The event may well be the same one as that depicted in the painting by the Vrooms, namely the encounter between Vice-Admiral Johan Adriaensz Cant’s Halve Maan and a number of Spanish galleys near Dover on 3 October 1602.2 The fact that the town and castle are not very faithful depictions does not invalidate this identification, since topographical accuracy was not always a requirement in scenes of this kind.
Bol’s style is a little reminiscent of Vroom’s and Aert Anthonisz’s, but the execution is considerably weaker.3 The palette is not particularly colourful, so it is very possible that the painting dates from the 1630s.
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. 22.
Literature
Willis 1911, pp. 21-22; Bol 1973, pp. 52-53
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 53, no. 538; 1976, p. 123, no. A 4250; 2007, no. 22
Citation
E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Cornelis Bol, Naval Battle between Dutch Men-of-War and Spanish Galleys, c. 1633 - 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.6092
(accessed 21 September 2024 12:34:59).