Dutch Golden Age Marine Painting
F2. Maritime Culture, Heritage, Archaeology, Art and MuseumsDefinition
Seventeenth century genre with van de Velde, Bakhuizen, and Vroom.
Dutch Golden Age marine painting is the seventeenth-century genre that made the sea and the ship its principal subject, flourishing with the rise of Dutch maritime trade and naval power. Hendrick Vroom established the form; Willem van de Velde the Elder and Younger raised it to documentary precision, sketching battles from small boats before working them up in oils, and later worked for the English court. Ludolf Bakhuizen carried the tradition to 1708. The paintings are prized both as art and as records of ship construction and rigging.