Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, Cornelis Hendriksz Vroom

Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the English Coast, 3 October 1602

1617

Inscriptions

  • signature and date, top centre on the flag:VROOM 1617

Technical notes

The support, a plain-weave canvas, has been lined. The tacking edges have not been preserved. The paint was applied in thin layers over a white ground. The figures in the galleys are more sketchy and opaque than those in the rest of the painting.

Scientific examination and reports

  • technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 17 november 2004

Condition

Poor. The lining is unstable and is coming loose. The background is severely abraded and obscured by discoloured areas of retouching.

Conservation

  • W.A. Hopman, 1874: canvas lined, varnish regenerated
  • H. Plagge, 1961: restored

Provenance

...; ? estate inventory 1632, Oude Hof, The Hague, no. 244 (‘schilderie van Vroom daer de schepen met de galeyen vechten’);1Drossaers/Lunsingh Scheurleer I, 1974, p. 208, no. 632....; first recorded in the museum, 7 December 18002Moes/Van Biema 1909, p. 37, 217; Van Thiel 1981a, p. 186, no. 22.

ObjectNumber: SK-A-460

The artist

Biography

Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom (Haarlem c. 1566 - Haarlem 1640)

According to Karel van Mander in his lengthy account of Hendrick Vroom’s life, the artist was born in Haarlem in 1566. He began his career as a decorator of delftware, his father’s craft. A document of 1634 reveals that he learned ‘art’ in Delft. He travelled to Spain and Italy in his youth, remaining away from home for more than five years. While he was in Rome he met Paulus Bril, who encouraged him to start painting and gave him lessons. Between around 1585 and 1587 he was in the service of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici. His journey back to the Dutch Republic took him through Venice, Milan, Turin, Lyon, Paris and Rouen.

Back in Haarlem he married Joosgen Cornelisdr Gans, but he was soon travelling again. Around 1591 he went to Gdansk, where his uncle Frederick Henricksz was city architect. According to Van Mander he made an altarpiece there (now probably lost), and his uncle taught him the rules of perspective. He then set off for Spain again but was shipwrecked and returned to his native Haarlem in 1592, where he remained for the rest of his life.

From the moment he got back, Vroom started making tapestry designs and painting marines. A series of ten tapestry designs traced the battle between the English and the Spanish Armada.3The tapestries themselves were destroyed in a fire in the House of Lords in London in 1834. Another major series of tapestries he designed is preserved in Middelburg Abbey. Vroom made his earliest known dated painting in 1599, The Return to Amsterdam of the Second Expedition to the East Indies, 19 July 1599 (SK-A-2858). His earlier paintings are lost.

Van Mander describes and explains the origins of the new genre of marine painting as follows. ‘Returned home he [Vroom] continued, on the advice of the painters there, making pieces with ships, and gradually he got better and better at making them. And since there is much sea-faring in Holland, the public also started to take great pleasure in these little ships.’

Vroom painted historical naval battles, ships’ portraits and views of maritime towns like Hoorn, Amsterdam and Vlissingen. His highly detailed depictions soon brought him fame, enabling him to ask very high prices for them. Van Mander also says that he was highly productive, with the result that he earned a fortune from his work.

Vroom’s two sons, Cornelis (c. 1590/91-1661) and Frederik (c. 1600-67), both became painters. According to Houbraken, Jan Porcellis (before c. 1584-1632) was apprenticed to Hendrick Vroom. Given the similarities between Vroom’s work and that of Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen (before 1577-1633), it is assumed that he too was a pupil of Vroom’s.

Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007

References
Van Mander 1604, fols. 287r-88v; Ampzing 1621, [p. 33]; Schrevelius 1648, pp. 386-89; Von Sandrart 1675 (1925), pp. 146-47; Houbraken I, 1718, p. 213; Von Wurzbach II, 1910, pp. 833-34; Bredius II, 1916, pp. 659-61, 667-79, VII, 1921, p. 274; Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, pp. 581-82; Russell 1983, pp. 91-140, 204-11; Ruurs in Miedema II, 1995, pp. 226-38; Giltaij in Rotterdam-Berlin 1996, p. 79; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 332-37

Cornelis Hendricksz Vroom (Haarlem c. 1590/91 - Haarlem 1661)

The year of Cornelis Vroom’s birth can be deduced from a document of February 1649 in which he declared himself to be ‘about 58 years old’. His father and teacher was the famous marine painter Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom. Cornelis Vroom’s earliest dated work is a marine of 1615.4Spanish Men-of-War Engaging Barbary Corsairs, Greenwich, National Maritime Museum; Keyes 1975, II, p. 182, no. P 18. Around 1620 he abandoned marine painting in favour of landscapes. His earliest work in this genre is from 1622.5River View with Boating, London, private collection; Keyes 1975, II, p. 188, no. P 28. Willem Buytewech and Esaias and Jan van de Velde influenced his early landscape oeuvre, which is also often reminiscent of Adam Elsheimer’s work. Although he probably joined much earlier, the first record of his membership in the painters’ guild in Haarlem is from 1635. By 1641 he withdrew from the guild, but continued painting in Haarlem. In 1638 Vroom received payment for executing the landscapes in paintings by Paulus Bor6E.g. SK-A-852. and Moyses van Wtenbrouck for Frederik Hendrik’s hunting palace of Honselaarsdijk. At the start of his career he apparently collaborated with his father,7See the work shown here. and he continued to do so with other artists throughout his life. Samuel Ampzing mentioned him in 1621, and sang his praises in 1628. Theodoor Schrevelius placed him above all other Haarlem landscape painters.

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

References
Ampzing 1621, fol. E3; Ampzing 1628, p. 368; Schrevelius 1648, p. 389; Thieme/Becker XXXIV, 1940, p. 581; Keyes 1975, I, pp. 13-16; Giltaij in Rotterdam-Berlin 1996, p. 95; Van Thiel-Stroman 2006, pp. 328-31

Entry

It used to be thought that this was a depiction of the Battle of Gibraltar.8Coll. cat. 1903, p. 292, no. 2604. It is far more likely, though, that it is of a battle that was fought in the English Channel in October 1602. Spanish galleys regularly appeared off the coast of Flanders and in the Western Scheldt (the estuary of the river Scheldt), menacing Dutch naval and mercantile shipping. With the aid of some English ships, the Dutch succeeded in ramming and sinking two galleys. The others escaped and were attacked again in 1603.9Keyes 1975, I, p. 41; Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 331. The Dutch ship running down the galleys in the foreground is probably the Halve Maan commanded by Vice-Admiral Johan Adriaensz Cant, which has rammed the Spanish Pradill.10Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 331. In the background are the cliffs and castle of Dover. The half-naked galley crews consisted of slaves and prisoners of war. Memories of naval victories over Spain were kept alive both during and after the Twelve Years’ Truce.11Russell 1983, pp. 160-61. Paintings by Vroom and others from this period often commemorate both those earlier victories as well as fairly minor skirmishes like the one in this painting. It is possible that it is based on prints of 1603 by Hans Rem of Antwerp.12Hollstein XVII, 1976, p. 308, no. 2; see also Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 331.

The painting is signed and dated ‘Vroom 1617’, and was formerly thought to be by Hendrick Vroom alone,13Coll. cat. 1809, p. 79, no. 339; coll. cat. 1903, p. 292, no. 2604. but Keyes has convincingly shown it to be a joint work by Hendrick and his son Cornelis,14Keyes 1975, I, pp. 41-42. with Hendrick painting the large man-of-war and the waves, and Cornelis the galleys. The latter do indeed bear a close resemblance to those in The Naval Battle between a Spanish Galleon and Turkish Galleys, a signed painting of 1615 by Cornelis Vroom.15Greenwich, National Maritime Museum; see Keyes 1975, II, p. 182, no. P18, fig. 1. In no other work by Hendrick Vroom does one find so many figures. The style in which they are painted clearly differs from that of those on the large ship, and the palette is more varied. Cornelis’s are sketchily indicated and executed with more opaque paint.

This painting was one of the earliest in the Rijksmuseum’s collection, being on view in the Nationale Konst-Gallery in Huis ten Bosch back in 1800.16Moes/Van Biema 1909, pp. 37, 217; Van Thiel 1981a, p. 186, no. 22. Many of the exhibits there had belonged to the House of Orange, as this painting may have done. It is possible that it is identical with a ‘painting by Vroom in which ships do battle with galleys’ that was an overmantel in Prince Frederik Hendrik’s bedchamber in the Oude Hof (Old Court) in the Hague.17See Provenance; Drossaers/Lunsingh Scheurleer I, 1974, p. 208, no. 632; Van der Ploeg/Vermeeren 1997b, p. 39. If that is the case, it is likely that it was intended not for Frederik Hendrik but for Prince Maurits, who appears to have had a particular liking for maritime scenes.18Van der Ploeg/Vermeeren 1997a, p. 16. Maurits was Admiral-General of the Republic, and it is possible that one of the admiralties presented it to him.19Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 331.

Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 337.

Literature

Keyes 1975, I, pp. 41-42, II, p. 173, no. P 2; Russell 1983, pp. 160-61; Minneapolis etc. 1990, pp. 193-95, no. 49; Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, pp. 331-33, no. 172

Collection catalogues

1809, p. 79, no. 339 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, Admiral Van Heemskerk Running Down Spanish Galleys off the Coast of Gibraltar; 1843, p. 66, no. 342 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, Admiral Van Heemskerk Running Down Spanish Galleys off the Coast of Gibraltar; ‘in good condition’); 1887, p. 186, no. 1597 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, The Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607); 1903, p. 292, no. 2604 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, The Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607); 1934, p. 310, no. 2604 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, The Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607); 1960, p. 335, no. 2603 F 1 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, The Battle of Gibraltar, 25 April 1607); 1976, p. 592, no. A 460 (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the Flemish Coast); 1992, p. 91, no. A 460 (as Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the Flemish Coast); 2007, no. 337

Citation

E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Hendrik Cornelisz. Vroom and Cornelis Hendriksz. Vroom, Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the English Coast, 3 October 1602, 1617', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6501

(accessed 26 April 2025 11:37:32).

Footnotes

  • 1Drossaers/Lunsingh Scheurleer I, 1974, p. 208, no. 632.
  • 2Moes/Van Biema 1909, p. 37, 217; Van Thiel 1981a, p. 186, no. 22.
  • 3The tapestries themselves were destroyed in a fire in the House of Lords in London in 1834.
  • 4Spanish Men-of-War Engaging Barbary Corsairs, Greenwich, National Maritime Museum; Keyes 1975, II, p. 182, no. P 18.
  • 5River View with Boating, London, private collection; Keyes 1975, II, p. 188, no. P 28.
  • 6E.g. SK-A-852.
  • 7See the work shown here.
  • 8Coll. cat. 1903, p. 292, no. 2604.
  • 9Keyes 1975, I, p. 41; Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 331.
  • 10Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 331.
  • 11Russell 1983, pp. 160-61.
  • 12Hollstein XVII, 1976, p. 308, no. 2; see also Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 331.
  • 13Coll. cat. 1809, p. 79, no. 339; coll. cat. 1903, p. 292, no. 2604.
  • 14Keyes 1975, I, pp. 41-42.
  • 15Greenwich, National Maritime Museum; see Keyes 1975, II, p. 182, no. P18, fig. 1.
  • 16Moes/Van Biema 1909, pp. 37, 217; Van Thiel 1981a, p. 186, no. 22.
  • 17See Provenance; Drossaers/Lunsingh Scheurleer I, 1974, p. 208, no. 632; Van der Ploeg/Vermeeren 1997b, p. 39.
  • 18Van der Ploeg/Vermeeren 1997a, p. 16.
  • 19Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 331.