Ludolf Bakhuyzen I (Emden 1631-1708 Amsterdam)

We are grateful to Dr. Gerlinde de Beer for her thoughts on this picture, on the basis of photographs. Catalogued by Hofstede de Groot as simply 'A Dutch Warship in an Estuary', de Beer has suggested that the high dunes in the left background seem to be those of Texel, the largest and most populated of the Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea, North Holland, and also the westernmost of this archipelago, which extends to Denmark. This stretch of water was the site of the Battle of Scheveningen (1653) during the First Anglo-Dutch War and the Battle of Texel (1673) during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. This type of scene, with a Dutch man-of-war arriving or departing and figures on dunes in the foreground, features in Bakhuyzen's work as early as the 1670s; a fine example of c. 1670 is in the Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio (G. de Beer, Ludolf Backhuysen (1630-1708): sein Leben und Werk, Zwolle, 2002, p. 75, no. 31, fig. 81).