An admiralty yacht firing a salute as she prepares to depart from the anchorage

One of the sons of Willem van de Velde II (1633-1707), Cornelis was born after the family moved to England, circa 1672-1673. Little is known about the artist but he worked in the van de Velde Studio alongside his father, whose style in clearly evidenced in this painting. In 1699 he married Bernada, daughter of the marine artist Johann van der Hagen at the Knightsbridge Chapel. The present work has the characteristic pink sky and creamy tone of the other paintings known to be by Cornelis van de Velde, and unusually for the artist the painting is signed in the lower right corner. It demonstrates the quality of van de Velde's draughtmanship, rightfully deserving of the praise heaped upon him by J.C. Weyerman in De levens-beschrijvengen der Nederlandsche Kunst Schilders, 1729, who described him as 'the best of all marine painters we could name'.