After the Storm

c. 1700

Willem van de Velde the Younger

Painter, Dutch, 1633 - 1707

We look across choppy waves at a sailboat canting at a sharp angle, with several others floating nearby or in the distance, all beneath a sky filled with charcoal-gray clouds in this horizontal painting. In the bottom third of the canvas, the battleship-gray waves are topped with frothy white crests. The boat closest to us is slightly left of center, and its mast tips wildly to our right. Sunlight catches the straw-yellow sail as it pulls taut in the wind. At least two men crouch or bend over in the wooden vessel below, as white spray kicks up off the far side of the boat. Two white seagulls, tiny in scale, fly closer to the water’s surface to our left of that boat. The next closest vessel is to our right, and it is nearly swallowed in shadow. Two men huddle at one pointed end of the narrow boat, and a crimson-red sail flaps loosely in the wind. At least four more boats in the distance, along to the horizon, range in size from a small sailboat to a three-masted ship. The sail of the smallest boat also tips sharply to our right, but the tall masts of the ship are upright, and those sails are furled. Dark clouds billow up from the horizon, but break near the upper left corner. The sky beyond is pale apricot peach, and a few streaks of light reach the water’s surface.

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Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Robert Napier [1791-1876], Glasgow, by 1865;[1] (his sale, Shandon Collection, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 13 April 1877, no. 469); J. M. Anderson.[2] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 15 June 1901, no. 42); Wallis.[3] (V. G. Fischer Fine Art Co., Washington);[4] purchased by May 15, 1905 by William A. Clark [1839-1925], New York;[5] bequest April 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, as Marine; acquired 2016 by the National Gallery of Art.
[1] The painting is no. 413 in the Catalogue of the Works of Art Forming the Collection of Robert Napier, of West Shandon, Dumbartonshire, London, 1865, compiled by J. C. Robinson.
[2] According to M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde: A Catalogue of the Paintings of the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, 2 vols., London, 1990: 2:842-843, repro.
[3] See Algernon Graves, Art Sales from Early in the Eighteenth Century to Early in the Twentieth Century, 3 vols., London, 1921: 3:278.
[4] According to Dana H. Carroll, Catalogue of Objects of Fine Art and Other Properties at the Home of William Andrews Clark, 962 Fifth Avenue, part 1, unpublished manuscript, no. 135. The work is no. 495 in C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, 8 vols., London, 1923: 7: 126. It is mistakenly identified as having been acquired by Clark from Gottfried von Preyer of Vienna. See Robinson 1990 for more information.
[5] Althought records from the Corcoran indicate that Clark purchased the work in 1906, a 1905 review of his collection on loan to the Corcoran Gallery refers to "a marine by Van de Velde." (James Henry Moser, “American Collections: The W. A. Clark Collection at the Corcoran Art Gallery," _The Collector and Art Critic_Vol. 3, No. 7 (May 15, 1905):104.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1868

  • National Exhibition of Works of Art, Leeds, England, 1868, no. 607.

1906

  • Possibly Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1906-1911, unnumbered checklist.

2018

  • Water, Wind, and Waves: Marine Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2018, unnumbered brochure.

Bibliography

1907

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols. Translated by Edward G. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: 7(1923):129, no. 495.

1913

  • Graves, Algernon. A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813-1912. 5 vols. London, 1913-1915: 4(1914):1496.

1925

  • Carroll, Dana H. Catalogue of Objects of Fine Art and Other Properties at the Home of William Andrews Clark, 962 Fifth Avenue. Part I. Unpublished manuscript, n.d. (1925): 159, no. 135.

1928

  • Corcoran Gallery of Art. Illustrated Handbook of the W.A. Clark Collection. Washington, 1928: 54.

1955

  • Breckenridge, James D. A handbook of Dutch and Flemish paintings in the William Andrews Clark collection. Washington, 1955: 51, repro.

1990

  • Robinson, Michael Strang, Van de Velde: A Catalogue of the Paintings of the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde. 2 vols. Greenwich, 1990: 842-843, no. 18.

2000

  • Bal, Mieke. "Sticky images: the foreshortening of time in an art of duration." Time and the Image. Edited by Carolyn Bailey Gill. Manchester and New York, 2000: 91, pl. 13.

  • Gil, Carolyn Bailey, ed. Time and the Image. Manchester and New York, 2000: 91.

Inscriptions

lower right on wooden plank, now illegible: W.V. Velde [J?]

Wikidata ID

Q46625230

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