Delft ca. 1602 – Delft 1684
A ‘pen painting’ of Ships on a choppy Waters near a Coast with a Beacon
Oil on panel
H. 36,8 cm. | W. 47,6 cm.
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PROVENANCE
With Rafael Valls | London | 2005;
Private collection | United States of America
REFERENCE LITERATURE
Giltaij, J.& Kelch, J. (1996). Lof der Zeevaart. De Hollandse zeeschilders van de 17e eeuw. Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, pp. 407-10;
Lammertse, F. (1996). ‘‘’Wat men met een penne doen can”; over penschilderijen met een maritieme voorstelling’. In: Giltaij, J.& Kelch, J. (1996). Lof der Zeevaart. De Hollandse zeeschilders van de 17e eeuw. Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, pp. 45-58;
Löffler, E. (2012). ‘Getekend op doek of paneel: het penschilderij’. In: Desipientia 19, nr. 1, pp. 23-26
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CATALOGUE NOTE
The present piece is a characteristic work by the rare Delft master Heerman Witmont, who was first recorded in 1642 in Delft, where he joined the Guild two years later. His oeuvreis limited to penschilderijen: Dr. Jan Sysmus, who kept a painters’ register between 1669 and 1678, referred to him as: ‘H. Witmont, groote schepen met de pen, moy’ (‘H. Witmont, large ships with the pen, beautiful’ (Lammertse, 1996, p. 407). His technique differs from that of his colleagues Willem van de Velde I and Experiens Sillemans by the use of brown instead of black ink and by the concentration of dots instead of cross-hatching in the shadows of the waves and the sails. The penschilder technique was thought to be the invention of Willem van de Velde I, however, it is very probable that it was developed independently in Delft and Amsterdam at the same time.