Artist: Hendrick Van Anthonissen
Date: 1650
Size: 99 x 133 cm
Technique: Oil On Canvas
On the beach in the foreground is a passage boat, and a little further off a small warship, with another one, its sails reefed, at anchor beyond. At the quay there are fishing boats, a few of which are flying the Prince’s Flag. Until now the painting has been going under the title Shipping on the East Scheldt near the Zuidhavenpoort, Zierikzee. The tower on the right is indeed that of the Zuidhavenpoort gate. The broad stretch of water could be the Eastern Scheldt, if Hendrick van Anthonissen took the liberty of omitting the canal dug in the sixteenth century, beside which the port and gate lie in reality, which flows into the Eastern Scheldt. In the distance are the vague outlines of a town with several church towers. Given the location of the Zuidhavenpoort that could only be Goes with the nearby village of Kloetinge. Van Anthonissen painted topographically recognizable views from the very start of his career. One early example is a beach scene near Scheveningen that can be dated to the late 1620s on the basis of the clothing of the figures.8 He often depicted locations in Zeeland,9 so Bol was probably right when he remarked that Van Anthonissen must have visited this province.10 The artist’s son Arnoldus actually settled there in 1664. Bol assigned this canvas to the mid-1630s, but the influence of Simon de Vlieger, which is clearly evident in the subject of a harbour scene in calm weather and in the composition with its monumental emphasis, suggests dating it later, to the 1640s. De Beer even placed it around 1650 at the earliest.11 Jonkheer A.W.G. van Riemsdijk, who owned Ships near Zierikzee around the middle of the nineteenth century,12 had another large picture by Van Anthonissen, and according to Bredius this was its pendant.13 That work is no longer traceable, nor is there a known photograph of it. Without further information it is impossible to say for certain whether the present canvas had a companion piece, although Van Anthonissen definitely did produce paintings in pairs.14 Van Anthonissen’s paintings are usually much smaller and were undoubtedly made for the open market. This large, highly detailed piece, which Bredius praised as ‘one of the master’s most important works’, could very well have been a commission. The small three-master with the arms of Deventer on its ornately decorated stern could be the portrait of a real ship, and the admiralty to which it belonged could have ordered the picture. It cannot be identified for certain with one of the men-of-war named Deventer, all of which belonged to the Amsterdam Admiralty. Eddy Schavemaker, 2022 See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
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