The support consists of two horizontally grained oak panels and is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1595. The panel could have been ready for use by 1604, but a date in or after 1614 is more likely. The ground layer is white, and the paint layers were smoothly applied with a little impasto for the highlights.

Poor. The support has a convex warp. There are numerous small losses in the paint and ground layers. The sky and other thinly painted areas are abraded. There are many discoloured retouchings in the sky, sails and sea. The varnish is too thin.

…; collection Barbier, Nancy;¹¹Note RMA.…; from A. Vecht & Co., Amsterdam, with two views of Naples by Gaspar Adriaansz van Wittel (SK-A-2659 and SK-A-2660), fl. 405, to the museum, 1913

Object number: SK-A-2661

This unsigned and undated panel shows a threemaster and a smack sailing on the unruffled surface of an inland waterway. It was long attributed to Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom before Bol rightly pointed out that it was too weak to be autograph.²²Bol 1973, p. 327, note 64. One possible alternative, on the evidence of the small figures and the background with a farmstead, a wood and a church spire, is an attribution to Aert Anthonisz. The background of his Ships off IJsselmonde (SK-A-1446) is somewhat comparable. However, the panel is in such poor condition as to make any attribution extremely difficult.

Everhard Korthals Altes, 2007

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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. 413.

Bol 1973, p. 28, note 64

1918, p. 427, no. 2606a (as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom); 1934, p. 311, no. 2606a (as attributed to Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom); 1960, p. 335, no. 2606 A 2 (as attributed to Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom); 1976, p. 593, no. A 2661 (as attributed to Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom); 2007, no. 413

E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'anonymous, A Sea-Going Vessel Sailing into an Inland Waterway, c. 1614 - c. 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026921