Lot Essay
M.S. Robinson, at the time of the Colnaghi catalogue, dated the present drawing to circa 1675 and identified it with a portrait of the Tiger in the Ingram Collection at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (M.S. Robinson, Van de Velde Drawings. A catalogue of the drawings in the National Maritime Museum made by the Elder and the Younger van de Velde, Cambridge, 1974, II, no. 1106, pl. 98). The Tiger, a fourth-rate ship of 44 guns, was built in 1647 and rebuilt in 1681.