ABRAHAM VAN BEYEREN
The Hague 1620 -1690 Overschie
Shipping with Dordrecht beyond
Oil on canvas
35¼ x 49 in. (89.5 x 124.5 cm.)
Provenance
European private collection.
Abraham van Beyeren is most famous as the supreme master of the painterly still life, however he also produced a small number of atmospheric and spirited marine paintings between c.1640 - 1650. The present painting is a beautiful addition to this group, and is amongst his largest and most ambitious compositions.
The most comparable painting to the present work is van Beyeren’s ‘Ships Sailing in a Strong Breeze’ (private collection, Bahamas), which was selected as an exemplar of the artist’s work for the important Dutch marine exhibition, Praise of Ships and the Sea in 1996/7(i). The principal fishing pink in the right foreground is repeated in both paintings, and each composition shares similarly spirited, choppy sea and immense cumulous filled sky with a town or city skyline in the distance.
As with the artist’s still life’s, van Beyeren’s marine paintings are admired today for their skillful capturing of light, air and atmosphere, and for his broad, painterly technique which was evidently an essential adjunct to the artist’s conveyance of naturalistic effects.
The work of Abraham van Beyeren is represented in numerous museums around the world, including the Louvre, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, The Mauritshius, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the L.A. County Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum, the Ashmolean Museum, and the National Maritime Museum, London.
BIOGRAPHY OF ABRAHAM VAN BEYEREN
Abraham van Beyeren was born in the Hague in 1620, but was living in Leiden by 1639. In 1640 he was back in the Hague and became a member of the guild, and he also married there for the second time in 1647. In 1656 he was one of the founders of the ‘Confrerie Pictura’, the Hague association of artists. The following year he entered the guild of Delft, but was back in The Hague in 1663. From 1669 to 1674 he was working in Amsterdam, and in 1674 entered the Alkmaar. He lived in Gouda from 1675 to 1677, then moved to Overschie, where he remained for the rest of his life.
While there are relatively few dated paintings, his marine paintings are thought to date from the 1640’s, and to pre-date his lavish still lifes. His marines portray sea and estuary views with boats and fishermen, both in storm and calm, in which he conveyed tonal atmospheric effects in a manner that suggests the influence of Jan van Goyen. While van Goyen painted predominantly in a tonal manner however, van Beyeren was a supremely gifted colourist who skillfully deployed a range of harmonious tints through which he conveyed a sense of air and atmosphere.
(i) Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemaldergalerie im Bode Museum. Cat no 51, pp. 247 – 249. Oil on panel, 64.5 x 77.5 cm.