Lot Essay
Adriaen Cornelisz. van Salm spent his entire life in Delfshaven, a borough of the port city of Rotterdam. He was active as a schoolmaster and in 1706 became a master draughtsman in the city’s guild. He specialised in penschilderen – a method of painting or drawing in ink with a pen and wash on a prepared panel or canvas – which produced highly refined monochromatic images. The technique became especially popular with marine painters like Willem van de Velde the Elder from the latter 1640s, but it had previously been employed to great effect at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries by artists like Hendrick Goltzius and his stepson and pupil, Jacob Matham. Van Salm was in turn followed by his son, Roelof van Salm (1688-1765), whose pen paintings betray the strong influence of his father’s work.
The majority of van Salm’s paintings are executed on panels of fairly standardised sizes, with the present example belonging to the largest format in his repertoire. Comparatively few examples on this scale are known: only one further painting has appeared at auction this century (Sotheby’s, London, 5 April 2023, lot 13). Of particular historical interest is that the warship at the centre of this painting can be identified, a relatively rare occurrence in van Salm’s marine paintings (another example of an identifiable ship, the Overysel, is in the Inder Rieden Collection, London; see G. de Beer, The Golden Age of Dutch Marine Painting: The Inder Rieden Collection, III, Leiden, 2019, pp. 1054-1061, no. 67).
The central ship bears a banderole above its rudder that reads ‘TWAPEN VAN SCHIEDAM’. Above this is a shield with crossed anchors indicating it is a ship belonging to the Admiralty and, appropriately, the coat-of-arms of Schiedam flanked by two lions. At extreme left and right are further warships that surround nearly a dozen fluiten, identified by their notably pronounced tumblehome, which were frequently employed for trade in the Baltic Sea. The ingenious design of the ship’s narrow deck enabled merchants to pay a reduced toll to the Danes when passing through the Øresund strait, since until 1659 the duty was largely determined by the area of the vessel’s deck (op. cit., p. 1054). The combination of vessels makes it clear that this is a convoy of merchants’ ships, with the armed warships serving as a deterrent to pirates and vessels from countries with whom the Dutch Republic was at war. Despite their suitability for merchantmen, the fluyt’s light construction, slender hull and narrow deck made it difficult to fit out with guns for defence. From its founding in 1689, the security of these ships was often organised by the Directie der Oostersche Handel en Reederijen (Directorate of Eastern Trade and Shipping Companies), which funded the charter of warships by levying ‘galliotsgeld,’ or duties on the merchant vessels.
No ship with the name 't Wapen van Schiedam (Arms of Schiedam) is found under this exact name in the records. However, ship’s names could vary slightly in the early modern era and a Schiedam carrying fifty cannons is known to have been built by the Admiralty of the Maas in Rotterdam in 1689. The ship is last recorded in 1712 and was probably decommissioned shortly before then. That this is indeed the ship depicted here is all but confirmed by its having the same number of guns as the Schiedam and the use of the banderole on which is inscribed the ship’s name, a feature most commonly associated with Rotterdam warships. The Schiedam was put into service during the Nine Years’ War (1688-1697), when the Dutch Republic, England and Habsburg monarchy fought against Louis XIV’s France. During the war, French privateers from ports like Dunkirk and St. Malo regularly attacked Dutch merchant and fishing vessels, thus necessitating their protection.
While none of the other warships in the painting can be definitively identified and the precise event depicted is unknown, the prominence of the Schiedam at the centre of the composition suggests it may well have been a commission from someone closely associated with the ship. The names of six of its captains are known: M. Paradijs (1690), Johan Willem baron Van Rechteren (1693), Barend van der Pott (1696-7), Willem baron Van Wassenaer (1697-8), Jacob van Cooperen (1701) and Adriaan Boreel (1704). Documentary sources record three instances in which the Schiedam escorted merchant ships. In 1693, under the captaincy of van Rechteren, the Schiedam accompanied merchant ships to Cadiz, while in 1697 van Wassenaer and in the following year van der Pott similarly embarked upon voyages for the protection of trade. Each of these captains was employed by the Admiralty of the Maas in Rotterdam, a further clue as to why van Salm, a resident of nearby Delfshaven, may have been selected for this prestigious commission.
We are grateful to Dr. Remmelt Daalder for his research into the identification of the central vessel in this painting. A full copy of his report dated 18 July 2025 is available upon request.
The majority of van Salm’s paintings are executed on panels of fairly standardised sizes, with the present example belonging to the largest format in his repertoire. Comparatively few examples on this scale are known: only one further painting has appeared at auction this century (Sotheby’s, London, 5 April 2023, lot 13). Of particular historical interest is that the warship at the centre of this painting can be identified, a relatively rare occurrence in van Salm’s marine paintings (another example of an identifiable ship, the Overysel, is in the Inder Rieden Collection, London; see G. de Beer, The Golden Age of Dutch Marine Painting: The Inder Rieden Collection, III, Leiden, 2019, pp. 1054-1061, no. 67).
The central ship bears a banderole above its rudder that reads ‘TWAPEN VAN SCHIEDAM’. Above this is a shield with crossed anchors indicating it is a ship belonging to the Admiralty and, appropriately, the coat-of-arms of Schiedam flanked by two lions. At extreme left and right are further warships that surround nearly a dozen fluiten, identified by their notably pronounced tumblehome, which were frequently employed for trade in the Baltic Sea. The ingenious design of the ship’s narrow deck enabled merchants to pay a reduced toll to the Danes when passing through the Øresund strait, since until 1659 the duty was largely determined by the area of the vessel’s deck (op. cit., p. 1054). The combination of vessels makes it clear that this is a convoy of merchants’ ships, with the armed warships serving as a deterrent to pirates and vessels from countries with whom the Dutch Republic was at war. Despite their suitability for merchantmen, the fluyt’s light construction, slender hull and narrow deck made it difficult to fit out with guns for defence. From its founding in 1689, the security of these ships was often organised by the Directie der Oostersche Handel en Reederijen (Directorate of Eastern Trade and Shipping Companies), which funded the charter of warships by levying ‘galliotsgeld,’ or duties on the merchant vessels.
No ship with the name 't Wapen van Schiedam (Arms of Schiedam) is found under this exact name in the records. However, ship’s names could vary slightly in the early modern era and a Schiedam carrying fifty cannons is known to have been built by the Admiralty of the Maas in Rotterdam in 1689. The ship is last recorded in 1712 and was probably decommissioned shortly before then. That this is indeed the ship depicted here is all but confirmed by its having the same number of guns as the Schiedam and the use of the banderole on which is inscribed the ship’s name, a feature most commonly associated with Rotterdam warships. The Schiedam was put into service during the Nine Years’ War (1688-1697), when the Dutch Republic, England and Habsburg monarchy fought against Louis XIV’s France. During the war, French privateers from ports like Dunkirk and St. Malo regularly attacked Dutch merchant and fishing vessels, thus necessitating their protection.
While none of the other warships in the painting can be definitively identified and the precise event depicted is unknown, the prominence of the Schiedam at the centre of the composition suggests it may well have been a commission from someone closely associated with the ship. The names of six of its captains are known: M. Paradijs (1690), Johan Willem baron Van Rechteren (1693), Barend van der Pott (1696-7), Willem baron Van Wassenaer (1697-8), Jacob van Cooperen (1701) and Adriaan Boreel (1704). Documentary sources record three instances in which the Schiedam escorted merchant ships. In 1693, under the captaincy of van Rechteren, the Schiedam accompanied merchant ships to Cadiz, while in 1697 van Wassenaer and in the following year van der Pott similarly embarked upon voyages for the protection of trade. Each of these captains was employed by the Admiralty of the Maas in Rotterdam, a further clue as to why van Salm, a resident of nearby Delfshaven, may have been selected for this prestigious commission.
We are grateful to Dr. Remmelt Daalder for his research into the identification of the central vessel in this painting. A full copy of his report dated 18 July 2025 is available upon request.