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Turmoil and Tranquillity

This exhibition celebrates the National Maritime Museum’s unrivalled collection of sixteenth and seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish maritime paintings. These seascapes and coastal views, which are of outstanding quality, are on display in the Queen’s House. The Queen’s House, a rare surviving example of the work of Inigo Jones, once housed the studio for father and son artists, the van de Veldes, whose work is featured in this exhibition.
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About this collection

This exhibition celebrates the National Maritime Museum’s unrivalled collection of sixteenth and seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish maritime paintings. These seascapes and coastal views, which are of outstanding quality, are on display in the Queen’s House. The Queen’s House, a rare surviving example of the work of Inigo Jones, once housed the studio for father and son artists, the van de Veldes, whose work is featured in this exhibition.

Turmoil and Tranquillity focuses on the emerging genre of maritime art in the Low Countries in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century. The exhibition features the key maritime painters of the period and demonstrates the rich aesthetic and narrative potential of the genre. By displaying both Dutch and Flemish artists, the exhibition will highlight the reciprocal influences within the Netherlands and illustrates the emergence of the seascape as a distinct art form.

The period, 1550 to 1700, saw dramatic shifts in the political, geographic and religious structure of Europe, in which the Dutch Republic became a great maritime power with settlements and trading posts in the East Indies, Africa and the Americas. As part of the artistic ‘Golden Age’, the seascape evolved from a broader tradition of highly coloured landscape painting, infused with religious elements, into a distinctive genre of its own. This rise was fuelled by the mercantile power of the protestant Dutch provinces.

Turmoil and Tranquillity which features works by early Flemish masters including followers of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Joachim Patinir, Cornelis van Wieringen and Andries van Eertvelt, will examine the rising demand for maritime art as an independent painting style. The exhibition displays highly dramatic depictions of storms and shipwrecks which characterised mid-seventeenth century Dutch seascapes. Turmoil and Tranquillity examines the use of allegory within the emerging genre and discusses, particularly, the depiction of ships as symbols for the soul in paintings such as the Wreck of the ‘Amsterdam’ by an anonymous Flemish artist and Adam Willaerts’ Jonah and the Whale.

The interplay between paintings of tranquil coastal waters and the assertion of a Dutch national identity is explored through the work of the principal artists of the period including Jan Porcellis, Simon de Vlieger, Ludolf Backhuysen and Jacob van Ruisdael.

In an age distinguished by Dutch exploration and expansion, the demand for ‘exotic’ maritime paintings and topographical views was fuelled by the new merchant class. Depictions of Mediterranean and Scandinavian scenes and other foreign shores, are examined through works by Hendrick van Minderhout, Simon de Vlieger, and two celebrated expatriates in Italy, Gasper van Wittel (called ‘Vanvitelli’) and Pieter Mulier the Younger, ‘the Cavaliere Tempesta’.

The overlap of seascape and history painting, brought about by a growing demand for paintings recording battles at sea and illustrious naval heroes, led to the success and international reputations of Dutch and Flemish artists. This is illustrated with works by Abraham Storck and the Willem van de Veldes, who moved to London at the request of Charles II in 1672-73 and for the next 20 years had their studio in the Queen’s House, the setting for this exhibition.