Support The single, horizontally grained, quarter-sawn oak plank is approx. 1.7 cm thick. The bottom edge has probably been trimmed slightly, since the ground and paint layers end abruptly there. The reverse is bevelled on all sides. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1643. The plank could have been ready for use in 1659, but a date in or after 1662 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The smooth double ground extends over the edges of the support at the top and on the left and right, but not over the one at the bottom. The first, semi-translucent off-white layer is followed by a warm beige layer which contains white pigment, fine orange-red, some dark red and a few fine black pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends over the edges of the support at the top and on the left and right, but not over the one at the bottom. An initial underpainting, very faintly visible with infrared reflectography, was executed with a broad brush and indicates the position and shapes of the boats and large parts of the clouds. The sea was first laid in with broad, horizontal brushstrokes, followed by wet-in-wet blended greys and whites for the waves after which scumbles of white paint were added to form the crests. The sky was applied with reserves for the strip along the horizon and for the better parts of the mainsails of the boats in the foreground and on the right. It was brushed on with clearly visible, vigorous, mostly wet-in-wet strokes of blue, grey, white and pink with areas of rather thick white paint on top, accentuating the clouds. The vessels are mostly monochrome and have little detailing with the exception of the boat in the foreground. The paint was generally applied rather thickly with only some thinner, dark grey zones allowing the ground to show through. Coarse white pigment particles are visible to the naked eye throughout. A horizontal indentation near the upper left edge indicates that the plank was framed while the paint was still fresh.
Laurent Sozzani, 2011 / additions by Esther van Duijn, 2014

Fair. The signature and date have been reinforced. The waves below the vessels on the left and right are largely later additions. Strips of discoloured, brownish varnish along the perimeter indicate that varnish was removed at some point while the plank was in a frame. The varnish is yellow and slightly oxidized.

…; sale, Gerrit van der Pals (1754-1839), Rotterdam (W. van Leen and A. Lamme), 30 August 1824, no. 48 (‘Haut 47 centim., large 63 centim., sur panneau. A l’approche d’un orage, dans une partie de la Meuse, dont l’eau est agitée, est placé le bateau de passage de Rotterdam à Dordrecht, dont le peintre étoit le capitaine’), fl. 50, to Johannes Rombouts (1772-1850), Dordrecht;¹¹Copy RKD. his collection, 1850;²²[P.L. Dubourcq], Beschrijving der schilderijen op ’s Rijks Museum te Amsterdam met fac simile der naamteekens, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1870, p. 254, no. LXIII. by whom bequeathed to his nephew, Leendert Dupper Willemsz (1799-1870), Dordrecht; by whom bequeathed to the museum, with 63 other paintings, 12 April 1870³³NHA, ARM, IS, inv. 30, nos. 123 (8 March 1870), 132 (25 April 1870, no. 245); NHA, ARM, Kop., inv. 39, pp. 62-63 (11 May 1870).

Object number: SK-A-494

Credit line: Dupper Wzn. Bequest, Dordrecht

Although two seventeenth-century sources call Hendrick Martensz Sorgh an artist of ‘sea pieces’,⁶⁶Jan Sysmus in his list of painters of c. 1669-78, and Gerard van Spaan in his description of Rotterdam of 1698; see respectively A. Bredius, ‘Het schildersregister van Jan Sysmus, Stads-Doctor van Amsterdam’, Oud Holland 8 (1890), pp. 1-17, 217-34, 297-313, esp. p. 11, and G. van Spaan, Beschrijvinge der stad Rotterdam en eenige omleggende dorpen, Rotterdam 1698, p. 421. only a few signed marine paintings by his hand are known. Eight are mentioned in his oeuvre catalogue of 1982 by Schneeman, most of them from his late period.⁷⁷L.T. Schneeman, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh: A Painter of Rotterdam, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1982, pp. 242-46, nos. 94-101. The author suggests on p. 166 that Sorgh set out with his marines to fill the gap left by Jacob Bellevois, who was Rotterdam’s leading marine painter around the middle of the century before leaving for Gouda in the mid-1660s. The earliest one known today is the View of the Merwede from around 1644-47 now in Rotterdam,⁸⁸Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; illustrated in J. Giltaij and J. Kelch (eds.), Praise of Ships and the Sea: The Dutch Marine Painters of the 17th Century, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Berlin (Bode-Museum) 1996-97, p. 219. and the latest is the present Storm on the Maas of 1668 in the Rijksmuseum,⁹⁹A few others are in The State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg (1660) and in the Manchester Art Gallery (1666); illustrated in J. Giltaij and J. Kelch (eds.), Praise of Ships and the Sea: The Dutch Marine Painters of the 17th Century, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Berlin (Bode-Museum) 1996-97, p. 221, and photo RKD (no. 79131) respectively. which is regarded as the finest of Sorgh’s marines.¹⁰¹⁰F.C. Willis, Die niederländische Marinemalerei, Leipzig 1911, p. 58; L.J. Bol, Die holländische Marinemalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig 1973, pp. 191-92; R. Preston, The Seventeenth Century Marine Painters of the Netherlands, Leigh-on-Sea 1974, p. 45.

Sorgh’s fairly monochrome marines are in the tradition of Jan Porcellis and Simon de Vlieger. Schneeman, though, also drew attention to similarities to the work of the Hague artist Willem van Diest.¹¹¹¹L.T. Schneeman, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh: A Painter of Rotterdam, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1982, p. 165. With the sole exception of the early View of the Merwede in Rotterdam, Sorgh’s marines all depict seas that are rough or even stormy.¹²¹²On this motif see L.O. Goedde, Tempest and Shipwreck in Dutch and Flemish Art: Convention, Rhetoric, and Interpretation, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1989. In the present painting, too, the waves are being whipped up by a fierce wind. The sun occasionally manages to break through the clouds here and there, but the scene is otherwise drenched in the greys of the water and sky.

According to the catalogue of the 1824 Van der Pals sale,¹³¹³See Provenance. the depiction is of the (Old) Maas river with the boat in which Sorgh plied between Dordrecht and Rotterdam as a market bargeman.¹⁴¹⁴The same has been said about View of the Merwede in Rotterdam; see P. Haverkorn van Rijsewijk, ‘Rotterdamsche schilders’, Oud Holland 10 (1892), pp. 238-56, esp. p. 249. There the assumption is reinforced by the presence of a ruin which the author identified as the remains of the medieval castle Huis te Merwede, east of Dordrecht. The distant buildings are not specific enough to pinpoint the location, but it is very possible that this is indeed the Maas, and perhaps even with the ferry in which the artist himself sailed. The vessel in the foreground is probably a wijdschip, which was used on inland waterways.¹⁵¹⁵With thanks to Remmelt Daalder for his information about the vessels in the painting. According to Schneeman, Sorgh painted a second version in the same year that differs only in the slightly modified positions of the vessels.¹⁶¹⁶Present whereabouts unknown; L.T. Schneeman, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh: A Painter of Rotterdam, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1982, pp. 167, 245, no. 99.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

L.J. Bol, Die holländische Marinemalerei des 17. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig 1973, pp. 191-92; L.T. Schneeman, Hendrick Martensz. Sorgh: A Painter of Rotterdam, diss., The Pennsylvania State University 1982, pp. 166-67, 245, no. 98

1870, p. 254, no. LXIII; 1880, pp. 286-87, no. 333; 1887, p. 159, no. 1347; 1903, p. 249, no. 2215; 1934, p. 265, no. 2215; 1960, p. 287, no. 2215; 1976, p. 517, no. A 494

Gerdien Wuestman, 2026, 'Hendrick Martensz Sorgh, Storm on the Maas, 1668', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026337