Travellers Disembarking at a Jetty on the Scheldt in Strong Winds, Bonaventura Peeters (I), c. 1635 – (Bonaventura I Peeters) ◄ ก่อน ต่อไป ►

Artist: Bonaventura I Peeters

วันที่: 1635

ขนาด: 36 x 70 cm

เทคนิค: Oil On Panel

There can be no reason to doubt Bonaventura Peeters’s execution of this estuary view which is signed with his initials. The shoulder-wide lace collars of the two travellers disembarking at the jetty would suggest a dating of circa 1635. The village, beyond the jetty, with a windmill and low-lying church has not been identified. In fact, the stretch of water has not been recognized either; it was traditionally and reasonably thought to be the Scheldt, a view recently espoused by Vlieghe. If such was the case, the village would most likely be on the coast of Zeeland at the western end of the Scheldt estuary. Assuming the (?) porch of the church is towards its western end, the wind can be described as a strong, westerly. The armed vessel flies, at the main, the Zeeland flag and at the stern that of the United Provinces. It is not a states yacht as it has no lee boards as Daalder has kindly pointed out; he believes that it is a patrol ship designed to operate not on the open sea but on the Scheldt estuary.24 A similar ship appears in the middle foreground of Cornelis Vroom’s (c. 1591-1661) Arrival of Frederik V of the Palatinate and Elizabeth Stuart at Flushing on 29 April 1613 of 1623 at Haarlem.25 Another may be depicted alongside the frigate, moored at the quay of Dunkirk harbour in Peeters’s drawing of 1650 in Brussels.26 Although in the present picture the ship’s bows are still grounded, deck hands are preparing to raise the mainsail, as is also the case with the jib on the sprit-sailed barge (possibly a samoreux) with its cargo of (?) peat27 on the other side of the jetty. A rowing boat has taken off a man and woman (who is climbing up the jetty) from a wijdschip or smalschip on a starboard reach in the foreground; its jib has been slackened to lessen its way so that the rowing boat could have come alongside. Travellers’ luggage being brought up a jetty is depicted in Peeters’s picture of 1637 in Budapest;28 a variant of the theme at low water is Travellers Disembarking with Middelburg beyond in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp.29 Gregory Martin, 2022