The Battle of the Sound with the Eendracht Engaging Two Swedish Warships, 1658

…; collection Wilfred Buckley (1873-1933) of Moundsmere Manor, Preston Candover, Hampshire; following the death of his widow Bertha Terrell Buckley (?-1937), London, presented by the executors to the museum, 1937; on loan to the Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam, since 1979

ObjectNumber: SK-A-3271

Credit line: Gift of W. Buckley, Basingstoke

This painting has hitherto been described by the museum as signed with initials ‘P.V.V.’ and dated ‘167.’, and on this basis catalogued as by the Antwerp artist Peter van den Velde (1634-after 1687). But the only part of the signature on the spar at bottom centre that is securely legible is the first two letters ‘P.V.’. The rest, beneath the leg and arm of the mariner on the spar, is too rubbed to hazard a guess as to what may have been present. Its highly unusual placement in relation to the mariner and the doubtful status of the marks forming the two numbers opens the matter up to unresolvable speculation, which might be clarified by cleaning.

As has been recognized, The Dutch raid on the Medway (SK-A-307) seems to be by the same hand, which, however, bears no resemblance to that evident in the homogeneous group signed by Peter van den Velde, a fairly prolific, but naive artist.¹¹Signed (and dated) paintings have appeared quite frequently on the market; see also those in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, in G. Cavalli-Björkman et al., Dutch and Flemish Paintings III: Flemish Paintings c. 1600-1800, coll. cat. Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 2005, pp. 418-20, nos. 223, 224, 225, and in the State Hermitage Museum, N. Gritsay and N. Babina, State Hermitage Museum Catalogue: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Flemish Painting, coll. cat. New Haven (Conn.)/London 2008, p. 401, nos. 485, 486; see also L. Preston, Sea and River Painters of the Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century, London 1937, pp. 49-50. The manner of the artist responsible here is distinctive but not distinguished, and there seems to be no good reason for believing that he was southern rather than northern Netherlandish. Indeed, his style seems similar to that of a painting of a large sea battle uniquely signed by David Ludeking, which was exhibited in Detroit in 1942.²²L.J. Bol, Die holländische Marinemalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig 1973, pp. 299-300, fig. 302. That obscure artist whose surname is given by the RKD as Lundekint, is recorded as from the Livendau near Kassel and as active in Amsterdam from 1657 to 1664, but this last date is not secure.³³See under RKD Artists and Excerpts; under the latter is Hofstede de Groot fiche no. 1292415 which is a scan of a letter from the Gemeentelijke Archiefdienst, Amsterdam, 6 September 1966, giving archival information; the reference there to a burial of a David Lundeking in 1664 could refer not to the artist but to his homonymous son born in 1660. At all events, a comparison with only one signed work, poorly reproduced, is insufficient to warrant an attribution for SK-A-307 and SK-A-3271, so taking into account the earlier view of the museum, both are here ascribed to the ‘Netherlandish school’. As there is no means of dating the present painting beyond the date (1658) of the incident depicted, it is here dated, on the grounds of the stylistic similarity with SK-A-307, to the same approximate time frame of circa 1670. The prototype or source for the rendering of this sea battle has not been identified, but it was probably a print of Dutch authorship.

The Battle of the Sound (Øresund), between the Dutch and Swedish fleets, took place off Kronborg Castle, on 8 November 1658. It was occasioned by the States General’s determination to protect the Republic’s Baltic trade which was threatened by King Charles X Gustav of Sweden’s (r. 1654-60) obtaining control of both sides of the Sound.⁴⁴M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde: A Catalogue of the Paintings of the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, 2 vols., London 1990, I, p. 21 under no. 324. The commander of the Dutch fleet was an ex-cavalry officer and republican, Lieutenant Admiral Jacob van Wassenaer (1616-1665), Heer van Obdam. The action of the Dutch fleet forced Charles X Gustav to abandon the siege of Copenhagen.⁵⁵M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde: A Catalogue of the Paintings of the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, 2 vols., London 1990, I, p. 21 under no. 324. Van Obdam’s campaign was recorded by Willem van de Velde I (1611-1693)⁶⁶M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde Drawings: A Catalogue of the Drawings in the National Maritime Museum made by the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, Cambridge 1958, pp. 120-22, nos. (35)-(39), and 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, pp. 21-30, nos. 322-328. who had his berth in the Stavoren,⁷⁷M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde Drawings: A Catalogue of the Drawings in the National Maritime Museum made by the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, Cambridge 1958, p. 6 and note 3. one of the vessels named in the present picture, the other being Van Obdam’s flagship, the Eendracht.

The Dutch ships wear the Dutch tricolour at their main masts; two, the Eendracht and Stavoren, fly at their sterns the Bloody Flag or Flag of Defiance (Bloedvlag) decorated with an emblem of a raised arm holding a sabre.⁸⁸For the plain, red Bloody Flag, chiefly flown in the seventeenth century, see T. Wilson, Flags at Sea: A Guide to the Flags Flown at Sea by British and Some Foreign Ships, from the 16th Century to the Present Day, Illustrated from the Collection of the National Maritime Museum, London 1986, p. 108. The variation shown was presumably inspired by a Biblical quotation such as from Psalm 98.1: ‘O Sing unto the Lord, a new song, … his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory’ or Psalm 89.10 or 13; see also J.M.G. van der Poel, ‘“De Ruyter is myn naem”. Een zeventiende-eeuws scheepsmodel in de Alkmaarse Grote Kerk’, in L. Noordegraaf (ed.), Glans en glorie van de Grote Kerk. Het interieur van de Alkmaarse Sint Laurens, Hilversum 1996, pp. 247-62, esp. p. 261, 249, 251, figs. 1, 2, commenting on the bloedvlag at the stern of the model of 1667 on display in the Alkmaar Sint Laurenskerk. The flag flies at the stern of the Aemilia, Tromp’s flagship, see G. Asaert, P.M. Bosscher, J.R. Bruijn and W.J. van Hoboken, Maritieme geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 4 vols., Bussum 1976-78, II, 1977, p. 332, for the reproduction of an anonymous print, and in other seventeenth-century Dutch depictions of sea battles, for instance two in the National Maritime Museum, Concise Catalogue of Oil Paintings in the National Maritime Museum, coll. cat. London (Greenwich)/Woodbridge 1988, pp. 414d, 530d. One is also on display among the Spanish war flags hanging from the ceiling in the Great Hall of the Binnenhof, The Hague, in Batholomeus van Bassen/D. van Delen’s 1651 painting in the Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. 1976, p. 190, inv. no. SK-C-1350. Usage was not only Dutch as the raised arm was combined with the Swedish national flag at the stern of a warship in a print in Johan Mansson’s navigational instruction book of 1644 illustrated on the cover of The Flag Bulletin 18 (1979), no. 4. The Swedish ships wear at their main masts not the national flag but one decorated with three open crowns Or on a blue field, a traditional, national emblem of Sweden and part of its coat of arms.⁹⁹A. Åberg, ‘The National Flags of Sweden’, The Flag Bulletin 18 (1979), no.4, pp. 00-00, esp. p. 129

The main action shows the Eendracht on a port reach heavily engaged between two Swedish ships on a starboard reach and tack. A comparable episode also placed in the left foreground of the composition was depicted by Willem van de Velde I in a grisaille at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich,¹⁰¹⁰M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde: A Catalogue of the Paintings of the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, 2 vols., London 1990, I, p. 24, no. 332. in which one of the Swedish battleships is seen from the stern on a port reach. Robinson has identified the Swedish ships as probably the Mercurius (seen from the stern) and the Carolus.¹¹¹¹M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde: A Catalogue of the Paintings of the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, 2 vols., London 1990, I, p. 24, no. 332; according to R.C. Anderson, Naval Wars in the Baltic during the Sailing-Ship Epoch, 1522-1850, London 1910, p. 84, the Eendracht was engaged by several Swedish ships ‘The Morgonstjerna and Pelikan attacked ... to starboard, the Cesar aft and other ships to port...’.

In the foreground, a Swedish ship and nearby a Dutch ship are all but sunk with sailors struggling to save themselves; beyond is the Stavoren engaged with a Swedish ship. As Van de Velde had also shown, among the masts to the right can probably be made out those of the Viktoria, the flagship of the Swedish Lord High Admiral Karl Gustav Wrangel (1613-1676), disabled early in the battle and making for the castle of Kronborg, which is inaccurately depicted¹²¹²M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde: A Catalogue of the Paintings of the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, 2 vols., London 1990, I, p. 24, no. 324; M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde Drawings: A Catalogue of the Drawings in the National Maritime Museum made by the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, Cambridge 1958, p. 122, no. (40). in the right background.

The Stavoren of 48 guns was in service from 1653 to 1672 at which latter date she was captured by the English;¹³¹³A. Konstam, Warships of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, 1652-74, Oxford 2011, p. 44 at the Battle of the Sound she was captained by Jans Caullery.¹⁴¹⁴J. Watts de Peyster, The Battle of the Sound or Baltic, Fought 30th October … 1658, between the Victorious Hollanders … under Jacob, Baron Wassenaer, Lord of Opdam … and the Swedes, Commanded by Charles Gustavus Wrangel, etc., Poughkeepsie 1858, p. 14; she was badly damaged in the fight, and her captain was later to take over a Danish ship, Sorte Rytter, see R.C. Anderson, Naval Wars in the Baltic during the Sailing-Ship Epoch, 1522-1850, London 1910, p. 86. The Eendracht of 76 guns, only part of whose coat of arms – the rampant lion of the United Provinces¹⁵¹⁵Cf. W. van de Velde I’s drawing at Greenwich, see M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde Drawings: A Catalogue of the Drawings in the National Maritime Museum made by the Elder and the Younger Willem van de Velde, Cambridge 1958, p. 147, no. (41), pl. 16. – is depicted here, was built at Dordrecht in 1653¹⁶¹⁶A. Konstam, Warships of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, 1652-74, Oxford 2011, p. 24. and blew up in 1665 at the Battle of Lowestoft shortly after Van Obdam, again her commander, had lost his life. Other views of the Battle of the Sound are by the Dutch painter Arnoldus van Anthonissen (c. 1630-1703)¹⁷¹⁷M.L. Wurfbain, Catalogus van de schilderijen en tekeningen, coll. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1983, pp. 47-48, no. 7. and possibly Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraten (1622-1666).¹⁸¹⁸Het Scheepvaartmuseum Amsterdam, see G. Giltaij and J. Kelch, Praise of Ships and the Sea: The Dutch Marine Painters of the 17th Century, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Berlin (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) 1996-97, pp. 273-76, no. 58.

Gregory Martin, 2022

R.C. Anderson, Naval Wars in the Baltic during the Sailing-Ship Epoch, 1522-1850, London 1910, pp. 81-85; G. Assaert, Maritieme geschiedenis der Nederlanden, II: Zeventiende eeuw, van 1585 tot ca 1680, Bussum 1977, pp. 331, 342-43

1960, pp. 315-16, no. 2455 D2; 1976, p. 564, no. A 3271

G. Martin, 2022, 'anonymous, The Battle of the Sound with the Eendracht Engaging Two Swedish Warships, 1658, Low Countries, c. 1670', in Flemish Paintings in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9621