Object data
oil on plywood
support: height 43.5 cm × width 29.3 cm
outer size: depth 4 cm (support incl. frame)
Abraham de Verwer (attributed to)
An Amsterdam East Indiaman
c. 1625 - c. 1650
Technical notes
The painting has a modern plywood support. The original support was completely removed. The vertical impression left by a join and the craquelure, which is typical of a painting on panel, suggests that the original support was a panel consisting of two planks. The thinly applied ground layer is white. The ship was painted over the sea and sky. The paint layers are primarily smooth, with impasto being used for details such as the foam of the waves, the counter decoration of the ship and the houses in the background.
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 5 January 2005
Condition
Poor. There are extensive losses and overpainting.
Provenance
? Commissioned by or for the Oudezijdshuiszittenhuis, Oude Kerk Amsterdam; ? transferred with this institution to Leprozengracht, Amsterdam, 1655; first recorded in this institution in 1808;1 transferred with this institution to the Nieuwezijdshuiszittenhuis, Prinsengracht, Amsterdam, 1808; transferred with this institution to the Armenhuis, Roetersstraat, Amsterdam, 1873; on loan to the museum from the City of Amsterdam since 2 October 1885
Object number: SK-C-453
Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam
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 (SK-A-603). 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
The greater part of the picture surface is taken up by a three-master, known as an East Indiaman, seen directly from astern. The ship’s prominence suggests that this is a portrait, but the lack of any truly distinctive elements makes it hard to identify. Hanging at the top of the mainmast is a Dutch flag, and the transom is adorned with the arms of Amsterdam. The town on the left is unidentifiable. The roofs of the houses by the quayside sparkling in the sunlight are attractively suggested with a few loose brushstrokes. The scene is very comparable to 16th- and 17th-century prints of ship types. One of those in a suite by Frans Huys after Pieter Brueghel the Elder shows a ship from virtually the same angle as in this Rijksmuseum scene, and on the left there is also a town beside the water.2
Neither the attribution nor the date of this painting is certain. De Verwer’s surviving oeuvre is small, and contains no truly comparable works. It was attributed to him immediately after its arrival in the Rijksmuseum in 1885, probably on the grounds of a general affinity with The Battle of the Zuider Zee (SK-A-603), which is both signed and dated. The panoramic view in that work probably indicates that it was painted earlier than this one. Comparison, however, is complicated by the fact that that painting is so much larger. One point worth noting is that the waves are depicted rather schematically. The painter rendered the foam with small white curls. However, this is not a distinguishing feature, as Vroom, Anthonisz and other early marine painters treated waves in the same way.
The painting has a provenance that probably goes back to the 17th century, when it was in Amsterdam’s Oudezijdshuiszittenhuis, the offices of the local Poor Relief Board.3
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. 311.
Collection catalogues
1903, p. 284, no. 2546; 1934, p. 301, no. 2546; 1976, p. 577, no. C 453; 1992, p. 90, no. C 453; 2007, no. 311
Citation
E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'attributed to Abraham de Verwer, An Amsterdam East Indiaman, c. 1625 - 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.6442
(accessed 1 May 2024 08:27:08).