A Warship Built for France and a Dutch Yacht under Sail

Entry

This painting was attributed to Jacob Gerritsz Loef by the twentieth-century British marine specialist Eric Palmer.⁷ The diagonal swell of the waves and the ships riding high in the water are the artist’s trademarks. Sailing on the left is a large man-of-war flying French flags. According to early collection catalogues of the museum it was built for France in a Dutch yard. The one of 1934 says specifically that it was the vessel that the English snatched from Texel harbour on 8 October 1627 and refused to give back.

The French commission was related to Louis XIII signing the Treaty of Compiègne with the Republic on 12 June 1624, in an alliance against Spain that would allow him to make large loans to the Dutch so that the latter could continue their war with the Spanish after the end of the Twelve Years’ Truce (1621). It also obliged the Republic to come to the king’s aid if France found itself in danger. As early as December a request for 20 warships reached The Hague. In that same year Cardinal Richelieu, who had been made Louis’s first minister, started building up a permanent French war fleet, and further orders were placed with the States-General in January and February 1625. The British regarded this support to and collaboration with France as a threat, for it would make that country a formidable rival at sea. They showed their displeasure by seizing the French Saint Esprit on 8 October 1627,⁸ which was also called ‘Toiras’ as it belonged to Jean de Saint Bonnet, Marquis de Toiras.⁹

There is no extant image of the Saint Esprit, so there is no proof that it is the large three-master in this painting, which appears to be based on an etching of another French ship published by Hendrick Hondius (fig. a). The print is inscribed ‘Navire Royale faicte en Hollande Anno 1626’ and was also known as Le Navire du Roi, L’Admiral, Saint-Louis, Grand Saint-Louis, Vaisseau du Roi and Le Royal.¹⁰ It is therefore assumed that Loef depicted the same vessel as Hondius, which accounts for the work’s traditional title of A Man-of-War Built in 1626 at a Dutch Shipyard for Louis XIII.¹¹ However, he altered some of the distinctive details, such as the figurehead. In Hondius’s etching it takes the form of Jupiter astride an eagle and brandishing a bundle of thunderbolts, but Loef turned that into Neptune with his trident in a two-wheeled chariot drawn by sea monsters. He probably did not set out to portray the same ship, so either it is a different or a generic one. As various technical errors have been identified in Hondius’s vessel,¹² it is not very likely that a marine specialist like Loef, who set great store by an accurate rendering in his paintings, would imitate such a print so directly and comprehensively. He may, though, have used it as a point of departure.

In any event, there is nothing strange about Loef depicting this three-master destined for France. The men-of-war were built in yards in Amsterdam and Enkhuizen.¹³ The only landmark in the otherwise vague skyline of the port city in the background is a slender tower, which could be the spire of the Zuiderkerk in Loef’s putative native town of Enkhuizen.

De Beer has placed the picture around 1635 at the latest on stylistic grounds.¹⁴ Indeed, the dendrochronology makes it clear that the panel could have been ready for use by that time.¹⁵ The subject, though, has to be understood in the light of the French commissions from Dutch yards in the 1620s. Willem van de Velde II also immortalized men-of-war built for France in a few paintings between 1667 and 1671, although they cannot be identified as yet.¹⁶ Given its large size and exceptional theme, this Warship Built for France and a Dutch Yacht under Sail was presumably made for a client who could probably be found among the personnel of the admiralties, naval architects and quartermasters involved with the order.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements