Object data
oil in canvas
support: height 153 cm × width 340 cm
outer size: depth 16 cm (support incl. frame)
overall: weight 73 kg
Abraham de Verwer
The Battle of the Zuider Zee, 6 October 1573
1621
Inscriptions
- signature and date, bottom centre: A.D.Verwer in[…] fecit 1621
Technical notes
The support, a plain-weave canvas, has been lined. Cusping is visible on the right side and at the top. The ground is white. The paint layers are smooth. Impasto was used only for the highlights. There are some pentimenti in the middle of the canvas.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 5 January 2005
Condition
Fair. The painting is abraded in the sky and parts of the sea.
Conservation
- J.A. Hesterman, 1901: restored
- conservator unknown, 1953: canvas lined; cleaned
Original framing
A stripped oak box frame1
Provenance
...; ? from a collection in Breda;2 ? estate inventory Oude Hof, The Hague, 1632, no. 684 (‘Twee groote schilderien op doeck, d’een van den slach van den grave van Bossu; ende d’ ander, noch grooter, van verscheyde groote schepen, gecomen van Breda, beyde door Mr. (Hendrick) Vroom gedaen’);3...; acquired by the museum, 1808; on loan to the Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft, 1949-52
Object number: SK-A-603
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Abraham de Verwer (? c. 1585 - Amsterdam 1650)
Abraham de Verwer, who also went under the name of Van Burghstrate, was probably born around 1585. It is likely that his family was of southern Netherlandish origin, but it is not known where he was born. He lived and worked in the province of Holland for most of his life. A document of 1607 shows that he was married to Barbara Sillevoorts, who came from the southern Netherlands. He was living in Haarlem at the time, where he earned his living as a cabinetmaker. In 1614 he was documented as being a painter. His earliest dated work is the Rijksmuseum’s The Battle of the Zuider Zee, 6 October 1573 from 1621 (shown here). He visited Antwerp and Paris around 1637-39. De Verwer became a citizen of Amsterdam on 23 January 1641, and was buried there on 19 August 1650. His subjects are marines and city views, some of them of Paris. His son Justus (c. 1626-before 1688) was also a painter.
Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007
References
Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1926, p. 306; Briels 1997, p. 397
Entry
It was in 1621 that Abraham de Verwer painted this monumental canvas of the glorious victory won at the Battle of the Zuider Zee in 1573 by the Sea Beggars, the name proudly borne by the maritime forces in the revolt against Spanish rule. A few days after the Relief of Alkmaar, the Spanish fleet was put to flight by the Dutch under the command of Cornelis Dirks, burgomaster of Monnickendam, and the victors also captured the Count of Bossu, the stadholder appointed by the Duke of Alva, governor-general of the Netherlands. It is not impossible that the Battle of the Zuider Zee gained added resonance after the end of the Twelve Years’ Truce in 1621.4
The painting shows that relatively small merchantmen took part in the battle, having been transformed into men-of-war for the occasion. The coast of North Holland can be seen in the background.
This painting may be identical with a work mentioned in the 1632 inventory of the Oude Hof (Old Court) in The Hague. In the old bedchamber below the quarters of Stadholder Frederik Hendrik were ‘Two large paintings on canvas, the one of the battle with the Count of Bossu, and the other, even larger, of various great ships arriving from Breda, both made by Master [Hendrick] Vroom’.5 It is perhaps a little unlikely that a painting by De Verwer was being attributed to Vroom a mere 11 years after it had been made, but today there is no known painting of the Battle of the Zuider Zee by Vroom.
This is one of the few signed and dated works in Abraham de Verwer’s modest oeuvre. As Bol rightly observed, this early painting displays the lively use of colour and panoramic manner of presentation that links the work of De Verwer with that of Vroom and Aert Anthonisz.6 The scene was painted delicately with a keen eye for detail.
The painting is still in its original box frame. Of particular interest are the holes bored in the sides of the frame for tensioning the canvas. Only a few 17th-century frames have something similar.7 However, the painting is not stretched in its original manner. It was lined, attached to a modern stretcher and returned to its frame. The original form of lacing the canvas directly into the frame was a very common practice in the Dutch Republic until around 1635.8
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. 310.
Literature
Willis 1911, p. 24; Bol 1973, p. 85; Keyes 1975, I, pp. 42, 128, note 64; Kloek 2000, pp. 142-43
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 284, no. 2545; 1934, p. 301, no. 2545; 1976, p. 577, no. A 603; 2007, no. 310
Citation
E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Abraham de Verwer, The Battle of the Zuider Zee, 6 October 1573, 1621', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6441
(accessed 23 September 2024 00:29:12).