Commissioned by the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague;¹¹J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, p. 173. transferred to the museum, 1883

Object number: SK-A-1394

Painting of a naval engagement.

During the War of the Third Coalition (1803-06) the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was determined to invade the British Isles. To achieve this he raised a new Army of England consisting of more than 160,000 men to be placed under his personal command and at the same time ordered a huge fleet to be assembled in the French port of Boulogne to support the colossal undertaking.²²N.A.M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815, New York/London 2004, pp. 529-30.

As an ally of the French, the Dutch Batavian Republic was expected to contribute both ships and men to Napoleon’s invasion fleet and between the years 1803 and 1805 several squadrons of predominantly small vessels – schooners, gunboats and transports – sailed from Flushing to join the main invasion force at Boulogne. A British squadron on permanent patrol in the North Sea predictably tried to prevent this from happening.³³J.C.J. de Jonge, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche zeewezen, 5 vols. and index, Haarlem 1858-62, vol. 5, pp. 534-85.

Martinus Schouman (1770-1848) painted this work in 1806 in his Dordrecht studio as an commission by the Department of the Navy.⁴⁴J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, p. 172. Rear Admiral Carel Hendrik VerHuell (1764-1845), who commanded the flotillas to Boulogne, was Secretary of the Navy at the time the painting was commissioned.

J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, p. 172; J.C.J. de Jonge, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche zeewezen, 5 vols. and index, Haarlem 1858-62, vol. 5, pp. 534-85; P.J.J. van Thiel et al., All the Paintings of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: A Completely Illustrated Catalogue, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1976, p. 508; J. Erkelens, ‘Martinus Schouman (1770-1848). Biografie van een Dordtse zeeschilder’, De Negentiende Eeuw 7 (1983), pp. 277-94; A. Lemmers (ed.), Maritime Technology from the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam: Multimedia Catalogue of the Dutch Navy Model Collection 1698-1889, coll. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1995; N.A.M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815, New York/London 2004, pp. 528-44; C.P.P. van Romburgh, ‘1803. VerHuell treft geheime voorbereidingen voor invasie in Engeland’, in R. Daalder (ed.), Maritieme geschiedenis van Nederland in 70 hoogtepunten 1500-2000, Amsterdam 2004, pp. 94-98

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Martinus Schouman, Clash of the Dutch and British Fleets during the Passage of the Dutch Flotilla to Boulogne (1804), Dordrecht, 1806', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027350