Willem van de Velde the Elder, ca. 1611–1693, Dutch, active in Britain (from 1672)
Title:
Ships and Militia by a Rocky Shore
Date:
ca. 1680
Materials & Techniques:
Pen and ink on prepared canvas
Dimensions:
25 5/8 x 38 7/16 inches (65.1 x 97.6 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1976.7.78
Gallery Label:
William van de Velde came to London in 1672 at the invitation of Charles II, who granted him a pension and a studio at Greenwich. There he established the taste for marine paintings, including battle pictures representing the Anglo-Dutch naval wars of the 1660s and early 1670s, many of which Van de Velde witnessed at first hand. This grisaille panel is an example of a penschilder, a painting made with brush and pen to imitate engraving. The scene itself is imaginary, showing a combined force of English and Italian ships off the North African coast. But the Barbary pirates on this coast were very real and harassed ships in the Mediterranean, selling captives into slavery in the Ottoman Empire. The British navy mounted offensive operations against the pirates in the 1670s, forcing the Barbary states to sue for peace, which protected British shipping but allowed the pirates to continue their operations against Britain’s commercial rivals.\n\n Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016
