13.4 Van de Velde's Legacy at Home
That picture contrasts sharply with the situations in the Dutch Republic. The profession of marine painting seems to have almost died out in this country, after the deaths of Backhuizen, Abraham Storck and Willem van de Velde the Younger, all three of whom died in 1707 and 1708. Apart from a few fairly good pupils of Bakhuizen, like father and son Jan (1652-1719) and Hendrik Rietschoof (1678-1746), there was at most a single graphic artist who reproduced paintings by Van de Velde and other marine artists later in the 18th century: Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (1726-1787) [13].1 Only at the end of the century did marine painting and drawing regain popularity, albeit on a smaller scale than in the heyday of Dutch painting. Examples of this include Engel Hoogerheyden (1740-1807) and Gerrit Groenewegen (1754-1826), neither of them, incidentally, painters 'in Vandervelt's taste' like their colleagues across the North Sea.
Collectors did appreciate good sea pieces from the previous century. For instance, a painting by Willem van de Velde the Younger, marked 'Sea with Warship' brought 3700 guilders at an auction in Amsterdam in 1778. Perhaps the export of Van de Velde paintings mentioned by Houbraken drove up the price: the vessel was in an English collection shortly after the auction. Today, it is back in Amsterdam and is shown as one of the highlights by this master in the Rijksmuseum's Gallery of Honour.2 Earlier in the 18th century, pieces by Bakhuizen or Van de Velde were much less in demand at auctions than, say, Rembrandt or Gerard Dou.3
Not until the 19th century was there a real revival of maritime painting, and Willem van de Velde the Younger became the hero of painters like Johannes Christiaan Schotel (1787- 1838), just as he was for Turner [14]. But whereas Turner saw Van de Velde as a challenge to create a new type of marine painting, Schotel in turn sought to work in a similar way to his predecessors, Ludolf Bakhuizen and especially Willem van de Velde the Younger. For him, the latter did not constitute a master whom he wanted to surpass, as Turner intended, but whom he wanted to emulate at most.
13
Cornelis Ploos van Amstel after Willem van de Velde (II)
Warship firing a shot
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-OB-24.651
14
Johannes Christiaan Schotel
Ships on a stormy sea
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. SK-A-1131