Read the visual description
We look across choppy waves at a sailboat canting at a sharp angle, with several others floating nearby or in the distance, all beneath a sky filled with charcoal-gray clouds in this horizontal painting. In the bottom third of the canvas, the battleship-gray waves are topped with frothy white crests. The boat closest to us is slightly left of center, and its mast tips wildly to our right. Sunlight catches the straw-yellow sail as it pulls taut in the wind. At least two men crouch or bend over in the wooden vessel below, as white spray kicks up off the far side of the boat. Two white seagulls, tiny in scale, fly closer to the water’s surface to our left of that boat. The next closest vessel is to our right, and it is nearly swallowed in shadow. Two men huddle at one pointed end of the narrow boat, and a crimson-red sail flaps loosely in the wind. At least four more boats in the distance, along to the horizon, range in size from a small sailboat to a three-masted ship. The sail of the smallest boat also tips sharply to our right, but the tall masts of the ship are upright, and those sails are furled. Dark clouds billow up from the horizon, but break near the upper left corner. The sky beyond is pale apricot peach, and a few streaks of light reach the water’s surface.
National Gallery of Art · Painting
After the Storm
Willem van de Velde the Younger and Studio
- Date
- c. 1700
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- overall: 25.8 × 43.4 cm (10 3/16 × 17 1/16 in.) framed: 44.45 × 62.23 × 5.72 cm (17 1/2 × 24 1/2 × 2 1/4 in.)
- Classification
- Painting
- Accession number
- 2016.22.7
- Credit line
- Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection, 1926)
- Time span
- 1651 to 1700
- Department
- CNE-B
Subjects and terms
- painted surface
- Baroque
- Acquired after launch of Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (NGA Online Editions)
- Dutch
- boat
Provenance
Robert Napier [1791-1876], Glasgow, by 1865;[1] (his sale, Shandon Collection, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 13 April 1877, no. 469); J. M. Anderson.[2] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 June 1901, no. 42); Wallis.[3] (V. G. Fischer Fine Art Co., Washington);[4] purchased by May 15, 1905 by William A. Clark [1839-1925], New York;[5] bequest April 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, as _Marine_; acquired 2016 by the National Gallery of Art. [1] The painting is no. 413 in the _Catalogue of the Works of Art Forming the Collection of Robert Napier, of West Shandon, Dumbartonshire_, London, 1865, compiled by J. C. Robinson. [2] According to M.S. Robinson, _Van de Velde: A Catalogue of the Paintings of the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde_, 2 vols., London, 1990: 2:842-843, repro. [3] See Algernon Graves, _Art Sales from Early in the Eighteenth Century to Early in the Twentieth Century_, 3 vols., London, 1921: 3:278. [4] According to Dana H. Carroll, _Catalogue of Objects of Fine Art and Other Properties at the Home of William Andrews Clark, 962 Fifth Avenue_, part 1, unpublished manuscript, no. 135. The work is no. 495 in C. Hofstede de Groot, _A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century_, 8 vols., London, 1923: 7: 126. It is mistakenly identified as having been acquired by Clark from Gottfried von Preyer of Vienna. See Robinson 1990 for more information. [5] Althought records from the Corcoran indicate that Clark purchased the work in 1906, a 1905 review of his collection on loan to the Corcoran Gallery refers to "a marine by Van de Velde." (James Henry Moser, “American Collections: The W. A. Clark Collection at the Corcoran Art Gallery," _The Collector and Art Critic_Vol. 3, No. 7 (May 15, 1905):104.
Inscription
lower right on wooden plank, now illegible: W.V. Velde [J?]
NGA object ID 195505. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.