Kolekcja | 09.09.2015 Works by Dutch marine painters are rarely vague, subjective impressions. The painters were proud of their country, which owed much of its greatness to naval power, and they were consummate experts in all aspects of sailing including ship design or even naval strategy. The Dutch took pride in their ability to tame the sea, their other fatherland, both with dykes and dams and with their powerful navy. This is reflected in the dynamic growth of the market for marine painting, which celebrated commerce and overseas investment.
Simon de Vlieger, the presumed author of the Sailing Boats at the Shore, was a marine painter whose works are numbered among the best expressions of the Dutch seascape. He was mainly active in his native Rotterdam, Delft and Amsterdam. Educated probably by Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, he taught such painters as Willem van de Velde the Younger and Jan van Cappelle. Vlieger made a great contribution to the development of Dutch marine painting. His seascapes anticipated the work of Jacob van Ruisdael and Meindert Hobbema.
Vlieger's early penchant for dramatized rocky shores, painted in monochrome in the style of Porcellis, was to give way to a love for calm seascapes with lots of space and a highly structural composition, like the Wilanów painting. The artist showed a poetic sensitivity to light as he suffused his misty seascapes with warm sunrays filtered through clouds. He was alive to the majestic beauty of sailing ships anchored in the port, whose silhouettes he painted in brightly luminous colours. He was unrivalled at depicting the melancholy beauty of shores and ports, possibly because used a different vantage point than most marine painters: rather than from the sea, his paintings are mostly views from the shore, sometimes from a small elevation.
The spellbinding effect of the Sailing Boats relies on the subtle use of glaze over the luminous surface of the wide bay. The smooth sea is contrasted with the vastness of the bright, cloudy sky. The colours are temperate but not without a refined grace, with elegantly tasteful colour accents. The ships looming far on the characteristically low horizon are skilfully endowed with a scenic power. The painting shows an everyday port scene, probably the ship visible in the background (a galleon?) taking on new supplies from the two small vessels with sprit sails.
Dominika Walawender-Musz