A waterschip and two smalschips off a sandbank in a calm, other shipping off the coast beyond

The artist was the son, and presumably also the pupil (he was certainly recorded as such by Jakob Campo Weyerman, De levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, Dordrecht, 1769, 4, p. 46), of the Hague-based marine painter, Willem van Diest (c. 1610-1663/4), who was himself a pupil of Simon de Vlieger (for whom see lot 566); Hieronymus' son, Adriaen van Diest was also an artist, working for most of his career in England. On 8 September 1663, Hieronymus exhibited a painting of 'a few small ships on a lake' at the Confrerie Pictura in The Hague, and he was headman of the guild of painters in that city in 1671 and 1675. Houbraken and Weyerman both record him as a painter of grisailles, but they were confusing him with an artist of the same name working in Delft who was the teacher of Adriaen van de Venne.

The influence of Willem van Diest and Simon de Vlieger can be seen in the present work (compare for example with the former's Fishing boats in a calm in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, or the latter's A smalschip and a waterschip anchored in an estuary in a calm sold in these Rooms, 11 July 2001, lot 25). These views of calms in rivers and estuaries are often regarded as the finest of the artist's works, comparable examples of which include the River landscape in the Staatliche Gemäldegalerie, Kassel (attributed by Hofstede de Groot to Cuyp on the basis of its 'feinen goldigen braungelben Tons') or the River mouth in the Gemäldegalerie, Düsseldorf.