The three Anglo-Dutch wars arose out of the Dutch need to make wealth from the sea – and the English challenge to them. Dutch marine artists were quick to respond to commissions for paintings commemorating the defeat or humiliation of the English, clearly expressed in Backhuysen's painting of the captured Royal Charles.
In England the dominant genre was portraiture. Displayed in this room are eleven from the set of thirteen portraits by Lely of commanders who served under James, Duke of York (later James II), at the opening battle of the Second Dutch War, off Lowestoft in 1665. Painted for James, they were presented to Greenwich Hospital by George IV in 1824. Pepys saw them in Lely's studio in April 1666 and wrote in his diary;
we there saw the heads, some finished and all begun, of the Flaggmen in the late great fight … The Duke of York hath them done to hang in his chamber, and very finely they are done endeed.
When the van de Veldes came from Holland to London in 1672/3, they found a ready market for paintings of the battles, as well as scenes of ships and royal occasions.
