JAN VAN DE CAPPELLE
1626 - Amsterdam - 1679
A Calm with Two Smalschips
Oil on canvas
17⅝ x 20⅛ ins. (44.8 x 51.1 cm.)
Signed ‘i.v. capelle’ (lower left)
SOLD TO A PRIVATE COLLECTION
Provenance
In the collection of a private European Noble family since the 19th Century;
Christie’s, London 10th December 2003;
Private collection, London, 2003 – 2008.
Two smalschips lie at anchor in shallow water and several other vessels appear further offshore. On the left, is a narrow spur of land and, visible on the far right, the faint outline of a distant shore. In the foreground, two fishing boats are drawn up on the beach and fishermen go about their work. The broad expanse of ocean is delicately suffused with sunlight and magnificent cloud formations billow upwards in the lofty sky. A luminous band defines the low horizon, conveying a sense of boundless space. The silvery grey of early morning is enriched by the rays of the sun. The two larger craft, which form the dominant motif of the composition, are bathed in sparkling light, their golden-brown hulls and sails setting up splendid reflections in the shimmering surface of the water. A serene mood pervades the scene.
Jan van de Cappelle is considered one of the greatest marine painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Unusually for the seventeenth century, he did not receive a formal training, nor was he a member of the Amsterdam Guild of St. Luke. According to the painter Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, van de Cappelle “taught himself to paint out of his own desire”(i) and his wealthy background evidently gave him the freedom to indulge his love of painting. Judging by the high quality of his work, he must have practised rigorously from an early age and learnt from other marine masters. Van de Cappelle’s early oeuvre reflects a deep admiration for Simon de Vlieger and this is borne out by his own collection, which at the time of his death included nine paintings and more than thirteen hundred drawings by the older painter. Certain designs and motifs which van de Cappelle shares with Hendrick Dubbels and Willem van de Velde the Younger, suggest that around 1650 all three artists may have worked in Weesp, near Amsterdam, where de Vlieger lived from 1649 until his death in 1653. In addition to his interest in the arts, Jan shared his countrymen’s enthusiasm for ships and sailing. He kept a pleasure yacht, moored in the ‘oude yacht haven’, in which he must have made sketching trips along the Dutch coast and rivers.
This painting, which has recently come to light after more than a century in a private collection, is a major addition to the oeuvre of Jan van de Cappelle. The number of paintings by van de Cappelle is not large and his period of artistic activity is relatively brief, lasting from around 1649 to some time in the 1660s(ii). The reduction in his output after this time has been attributed either to illness, or more likely to the responsibilities of running the family business. The artist is most renowned for his views of estuaries and rivers, featuring stately ships in calm conditions, but he also painted a few beach scenes and seascapes with choppy waters and a small number of winter landscapes.
The artist’s stylistic evolution is hard to reconstruct with much confidence, due largely to the scarcity of dated paintings, but also to the fact that, as Margarita Russell observed(iii), his style appears more or less fully developed even in his earliest paintings. In the late 1640s and early 1650s, van de Cappelle brought to perfection the type of marine painting, known as a “parade”, which features a calm sea populated by a profusion of ships, both large and small, gathered for a ceremonial occasion. During the same period, he also produced smaller, more intimate paintings of coastal waters with fishing boats, other craft and humble fishermen going about their business. The present painting with its lyrical character is a fine and characteristic example of the latter category. Both these compositional types are closely related to works produced by Simon de Vlieger around the same time. In his use of a silvery-grey tonality and luminous, atmospheric technique van de Cappelle is likewise indebted to de Vlieger.
Although it is not generally easy to date van de Cappelle’s paintings, our picture would seem to belong to the early 1650s, a period from which several dated pictures of comparable tonality and handling are known. For example, a comparison can be made with the coastal scene of 1652, formerly in the Spencer-Churchill collection(iv), a painting of A Calm, dated 1653, once in the collection of Lady Wantage(v) and the painting of an Evening Calm, from the mid 1650s, in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne(vi). All of these would appear to be derived from de Vlieger’s painting of Ships in the Roadsteads with Fishermen in a Calm, in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg(vii), which is datable to circa 1650-51. This dating concurs with the form of signature used here, which was typical of the period 1650/51(viii). Also characteristic of these years, is van de Cappelle’s palette, in which warm brown tints mingle with the overall cool, grey colour scheme.
BIOGRAPHY OF JAN VAN DE CAPPELLE
Baptised on 15 January 1626, Jan van de Cappelle was the son of Franchoys van de Cappelle, the owner of a successful Amsterdam dye-works called “de gecroonde handt” (the crowned hand) and Annekin Mariens. Although Jan was trained in this profession, his father probably managed the firm until shortly before his death in 1674, when Jan inherited it. Jan is variously cited in documents as a ‘carmosijnverwer’ (carmine dyer), ‘coopmann’, (merchant) and ‘konstrycke schilder’ (skilled painter). On 2 February 1653, he married Anna Grootingh, who was also from a wealthy family and later that year the couple inherited three houses in Amsterdam. Meanwhile, they lived on the Keizersgracht, where many of the city’s most prosperous patrician families lived. About 1663, they moved to the Koestraat, near the Zuiderkerk. In 1679, van de Cappelle died, a widower, survived by his seven children, who inherited his considerable fortune. His last Will shows that in addition to the dye-works and immense cash assets, van de Cappelle owned extensive properties and an art collection that must be rated among the most important of his time. His portrait was painted by Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Gerbrand van den Eeckhout.
(i) From a verse which appears in the album amicorum of the humanist, Jacob Heyblocq. The album is in the Royal Library, The Hague.
(ii) The latest dated painting is The River Scene with a Dutch Yacht firing a Salute in the National Gallery, London, inv. no. 966, which is dated 166?, but the last digit is not legible.
(iii) Margarita Russell, Jan van de Cappelle 1624/6-1679, Leigh-on-Sea, 1975, p. 19.
(iv) Jan van de Cappelle, A Coast Scene, signed and dated 1652, on canvas, 58.5 x 66 cm, formerly in the collection of Captain E. G. Spencer-Churchill, Northwick Park, Gloucestershire.
(v) Jan van de Cappelle, A Calm Sea, signed and dated 1653, on panel, 48.3 x 59.7 cm, formerly collection of Lady Wantage.
(vi) Jan van de Cappelle, Evening Calm, signed, panel, 47.5 x 59 cm, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, inv. no. WRM2535.
(vii) Simon de Vlieger, Ships in the Roadsteads with Fishermen in a Calm, signed, on panel, 69 x 91 cm, Strasbourg, Musée des Beaux-Arts, inv. no. 434.
(viii) Wolfgang Stechow noted that as a general rule works signed ‘J. V..Capel’ predate 1650, while those signed ‘J. V. Capelle’ dated from 1650/51 and ‘J. V. Cappelle’ postdates 1651.