Artist: Willem Van Diest
Date: 1629
Size: 37 x 73 cm
Technique: Oil On Panel
On the left two three-masters are sailing out to sea under a cloudy grey sky. The wind is blowing six fishing pinks towards the land, where a group of people are standing around an auction of the latest catch in the middle ground. To the left of them a strange ritual called woman-rinsing is taking place, which was in vogue until midway through the seventeenth century and is also described by Constantijn Huygens and Jacob Cats. While out on a stroll on the beach in the month of May a suitor would suddenly pick up his beloved and take her into the breakers. After being spattered she was carried to the top of a dune, pressed into the loose sand and rolled downward. As the denouement the young woman was then rubbed with salty sand on the beach.4 Willem van Diest was among the very few artists to depict this practice.5 The dress of the couple in the foreground, and especially the man’s broad-brimmed hat, is in the fashion of the late 1620s. That date corresponds to the dendrochronological findings, namely that the panel would probably have been ready for use in or after 1626.6 That makes this one of the artist’s earliest surviving works. The seascape entered the museum as a painting possibly by Jeronimus van Diest.7 It was then relegated to the ranks of anonymous artists for a long time. In 1887 Bredius was the first to suggest that it was by Willem van Diest.8 In 1904 Hofstede de Groot supported that attribution, but the museum’s collection catalogue of 1976 remained non-committal. De Beer nevertheless reaffirmed Van Diest as the maker in 2000.9 Although she maintained that Seascape off Scheveningen Beach is part of the Flemish landscape tradition with its use of local colour, the picture actually stands out clearly for its tonal palette, with the low horizon providing plenty of space for an atmospherically convincing clouded sky. The typical velvety brushwork in the swell of the waves and the lack of contrasts in the clouds are distinctive features of Van Diest’s later output. Judging by the spire of the church rising up in the distance it is the Oude Kerk in Scheveningen. Living in The Hague as he did, it is not surprising that Van Diest made several paintings of that nearby beach. There is a dated one of 1641,10 and another view from 1648 is in the Historical Museum of The Hague.11 Eddy Schavemaker, 2022 See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
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