Merchant men in distress in a gale off a rocky coast

This unpublished work is here proposed as an autograph replica of the picture, signed and dated 1667, 114 x 168 cm, in the National Gallery, Washington D.C. (G. Keyes, Mirror of Empire; Dutch Marine Art of the Seventeenth Century, 1990, p.88, no.4, with ill.). As pointed out by Keyes, the Washington painting is Bakhuyzen's earliest and most dramatic rendering of ships in distress off a rocky coast, other depictions being 'Ships off a mountainous coast in a storm' in the Musées des Beaux Arts, Brussels (Inventariscatalogus, 1984, p.12, inv.no.1481, with ill.) and 'The men o'war 'Ridderschap' and 'Hollandia' near Gibralter during a storm, March 1694' in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (B. Broos, R. Vorstman, W.L. van de Watering, Ludolf Bakhuizen, 1985, p.59, no.S.33, with ill.).

See colour illustration