拍品專文
The subject is a varient of one of the artist's favourite shipping groups, inspired by the seventeeth-century Dutch Masters. He occasionally 'shifted' the scene into the river Scheldt and its estuary. Our painting has the spires of Antwerp in the distance.
Cooke's ledger does not record the name of the original purchaser, but the picture was exhibited in 1890 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery where the lender was recorded as Lord Brassey. Sir Thomas, later first Earl Brassey (1836-1918), was a great naval politician, an MP, a Lord of the Admiralty, an author, an oceangoing yachtsman, and the founder of Brassey's Naval Annual, a name still known in publishing. His fortune came from his father, Thomas Brassey, a railway contractor. Lord Brassey was a friend of Cooke's and bought his only 'modern' picture The Review of the Fleet at Spithead by the Shah of Persia 1873, and presented it to the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, now at the National Maritime Museum.
We are grateful to John Munday for his help in preparing this entry. The picture will be published in his forthcoming catalogue raisonée of Cooke's work, no.3.
Cooke's ledger does not record the name of the original purchaser, but the picture was exhibited in 1890 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery where the lender was recorded as Lord Brassey. Sir Thomas, later first Earl Brassey (1836-1918), was a great naval politician, an MP, a Lord of the Admiralty, an author, an oceangoing yachtsman, and the founder of Brassey's Naval Annual, a name still known in publishing. His fortune came from his father, Thomas Brassey, a railway contractor. Lord Brassey was a friend of Cooke's and bought his only 'modern' picture The Review of the Fleet at Spithead by the Shah of Persia 1873, and presented it to the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, now at the National Maritime Museum.
We are grateful to John Munday for his help in preparing this entry. The picture will be published in his forthcoming catalogue raisonée of Cooke's work, no.3.