Naval Battle between Dutch Men-of-War and Spanish Galleys

The support consists of two horizontally grained oak planks and is bevelled on all sides. It has been trimmed slightly at the top. Both planks are from the same tree. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1622. The panel could have been ready for use by 1633, but a date in or after 1639 is more likely. The ground is white. The paint layers are smooth. Impasto was used only for the highlights.

Fair. Just below the join there are three old and stable cracks across the full width of the painting.

...; purchased from the dealer C.F. Roos, Amsterdam, by the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 4573), 1870;¹¹Note RMA. transferred to the museum, 1902

ObjectNumber: SK-A-4250

A large Dutch man-of-war is being engaged by several Spanish galleys just off a rocky coast. Bol probably took the subject from Hendrick and Cornelis Vroom, with one possible model being their Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the English Coast, 3 October 1602 of 1617 (SK-A-460). Both paintings show a naval battle close to steep cliffs topped by a castle or fort. Although there are considerable differences between the two compositions, the position of the central warship is almost identical. The event may well be the same one as that depicted in the painting by the Vrooms, namely the encounter between Vice-Admiral Johan Adriaensz Cant’s Halve Maan and a number of Spanish galleys near Dover on 3 October 1602.²²Zandvliet in Amsterdam 2000a, p. 331. The fact that the town and castle are not very faithful depictions does not invalidate this identification, since topographical accuracy was not always a requirement in scenes of this kind.

Bol’s style is a little reminiscent of Vroom’s and Aert Anthonisz’s, but the execution is considerably weaker.³³One of his few other signed works, View of a River with a Town on its Banks, is in the Hermitage in St Petersburg; see Bol 1973, pp. 52-53. The palette is not particularly colourful, so it is very possible that the painting dates from the 1630s.

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. 22.

Willis 1911, pp. 21-22; Bol 1973, pp. 52-53

1903, p. 53, no. 538; 1976, p. 123, no. A 4250; 2007, no. 22

E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Cornelis Bol, Naval Battle between Dutch Men-of-War and Spanish Galleys, c. 1633 - c. 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6092