Isaac Sailmaker
Isaac Sailmaker (* around 1633 as Isaac Zeilmaker, probably in Scheveningen ; † June 28, 1721 in London ) was a Dutch painter of the Baroque period who worked as a marine painter in England . To this day it is not clear whether all the pictures that are assigned to him also come from him, as he never signed his works and many early British nautical images were assigned to him across the board.
Life
Very little is known about the life of Isaac Sailmaker. Some of the information comes mainly from George Vertue's notebooks and from contemporary papers that were first viewed by Judith Aldrick at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and published by her father FB Cockett in 1995. According to this, Isaac Sailmaker was probably born as Isaac Zeilmaker in Scheveningen in the Netherlands in 1633 . From there he went to London very early and lived in the house of the painter Georg Geldorp , who came from Antwerp and had come to London in 1623. Geldorp had earned a reputation as a painter through a few pictures, but was mostly an art dealer and invited mostly foreign painters to his house who wanted to settle in London, including Anthonis van Dyck and Peter Lely . By Charles I. He was also employed as curator of the royal art collection. After his execution in 1649 Geldorf was in contact with Oliver Cromwell and painted for him.
Isaac Sailmaker worked as an assistant for Geldorf and in 1653 commissioned him to paint a painting of the sea battle at Gabbard from June 2nd to 3rd between George Monck and Cornelis Tromp in the Anglo-Dutch War with Oliver Cromwell in the foreground. In 1657, also on behalf of Geldorf and Cromwell, a picture of the fleet in front of Mardyke was created , which is lost and can only be proven by records. Two of the first portraits of ships that are kept in Trinity House date from this period . These are paintings of the Sovereign of the Sea as one of the first ship portrait paintings in England and the Royal Prince.
Geldorf died in 1665 after having been employed three years earlier by Charles II as a picture cleaner and restorer. Sailmaker was not mentioned again until 1695, at that time he was living in the village of Whitefriars with his wife Elisabeth and his daughter of the same name. The lack of information about Sailmaker, but also about other seafaring painters such as Jacob Knyff , JKD van Beecq and Adrian van Diest, can be traced back to the relocation of the workshop Willem van de Velde the Elder and Willem van de Velde the Younger to London in 1673, which in a short time Completely dominated the market during this period, displacing other painters. After the death of Willem van de Velde the Younger in 1707, Sailmaker became better known and received new clients.
In 1708, Sailmaker was commissioned by British MP Colonel John Lovett to paint Eddystone's second lighthouse , which burned down in 1755. Sailmaker painted four versions of the picture, three of which have survived. As a result, Sailmaker painted many more pictures on behalf of private individuals. He died in London in 1721 at the age of 88 on King's Bench Walk .
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Difficulty in mapping
The assignment of nautical paintings from England from the time before 1720 was difficult until the early 1970s. It was known that there were other marine painters besides the van de Veldes who were also known by name. These were Sailmaker, Jacob Knyff , JKD van Beecq and Adrian van Diest. While van Beecq and van Diest signed their works, Sailmaker and Knyff were not aware of this, and since there was also no clear assignment of the painting style to the names, the pictures of the two painters could not be distinguished.
This situation led to the fact that for a long time almost every seascape from the time before 1720, which could not be clearly assigned to one of the other painters, was sold as "Sailmaker" and Sailmaker became the "father of British nautical painting". It was evident that the Sailmaker oeuvre consisted of two very different styles, one of which was significantly more developed and finer than the other.
In 1971 a painting of the Eddystone lighthouse appeared surprisingly, the motif of which was already known from a signed etching Sailmaker and thus allowed a more reliable classification of his painting style. In the following year 1972 a painting by Jacob Knyff with a signature was discovered. Based on these two finds, the style of the two painters could now be distinguished; Knyff was clearly the finer and artistically more important painter, while Sailmaker was assigned the more primitive-looking, more static works.
The Sailmakers' work
FB Cockett lists 57 paintings and 11 etchings in his catalog raisonné that can be safely assigned to Isaac Sailmaker, but assumes a much higher number of pictures that actually come from Sailmaker. These are mainly seafaring and battle scenes of the English fleet, portraits of ships and some landscapes of Greenwich, Sheerness and Portchester Castle . The quality of Sailmaker's pictures is very different, their design is mostly rather naive, but carefully executed. The value of his pictures is seen primarily in the historical documentation of contemporary seafaring.
In contrast to his paintings, Sailmaker's etchings are for the most part marked with his name, with the spelling ranging from “Sylmaker” to “Saylmaker” to “Sailmaker”. The drawings were engraved by different then well-known artists whose names are now only known as Kip, Van de Vucht and Hulsbergh ( H. Hulsbergh ). Only two portraits of ships and the battle depictions of the Battle of Barfleur and the Battle of Vélez-Málaga date from his earlier creative years . Most of the engravings date from after 1707 and depict landscapes in southern England with several ships. Four cityscapes of Dover , Plymouth , Chatham and Harwich were made for a collection of engravings that appeared in 1714.
Among his paintings, the works depicting seafaring scenes are in the majority compared to few landscape paintings. Cockett counts six views of Greenwich, three of Sheerness and four of Portchester Castle, which are juxtaposed with 13 real portraits of ships, five battle scenes and 22 nautical scenes. Many of these pictures are in private collections and have only survived as photographs. A special form of dating his pictures emerges in the Greenwich representations: During his time as a painter, a number of central buildings by the architect Christopher Wren were under construction in Greenwich, above all the Royal Greenwich Observatory . According to the state of the buildings, the pictures can be classified according to time.
A characteristic of Sailmaker's pictures are the flags on the masts and the stern, which are almost always very large in his paintings and, due to their rigidity, give the portraits of ships in particular a certain immobility. Since the composition of the flags and the painted ships makes it possible to date the origin with relative certainty, a development in Sailmaker's painting from early, still very simple portraits to later, much more detailed portraits can be traced. In contrast to other painters of his time, especially Jacob Knyff and the masters of the van de Veldes school, his pictures almost always lack perspective and appear flat and not very animated.
As colors he preferred for the scenery, the water and the sky brown above all, light blue and green colors and is therefore in contrast to the very heavens colored with pink to red clouds as Adrian van Diest and JKD van Beecq painted. The main identification characteristic is his use of the gold color on the ship decorations, which, unlike other painters, he did not apply flatly with a brush, but rather as drops or elongated drops that protrude from the surface of the picture and form a relief.
A Ship Flying the Royal Standard with other Vessels off Dover (A ship with a hoisted Royal Standard and other ships off Dover)
A 64-gun man-of-war in three positions (a warship with 64 guns in three positions)
Men-o'-War and other Vessels before the Eddystone Lighthouse (war and other vessels in front of the Eddystone Lighthouse)
Two Views of an East Indiaman of the Time of King William III (two views of an East Indiaman at the time of King William III.)
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The contents of this article are mainly taken from the book by FB Cockett listed under literature . Information from other sources is supported accordingly.
Individual evidence
- ↑ After George Vertue: Notebooks. Edition The Volume of the Walpole Society, XVIII (1929–1930), XX (1931–1932), XXII (1933–1934), XXIV (1935–1936), XXVI (1937–1938), XXIV (1947; index), XXX (1951-1952). Quoted in Cockett 1995
- ↑ a b c Homepage of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich ( Memento from December 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ D. Mortier: Nouveau Theater de la Grande Bretagne. 1714
literature
- Frank B. Cockett: Early Sea Painters 1660-1730. The group who worked in England under the shadow of the Van de Veldes . Antique Collectors' Club Ltd., Woodridge (Suffolk) 1995; Pages 17-37. ISBN 1-85149-230-5
Web links
- Isaac Sailmaker in the artcyclopedia
- Charles Harrison Wallace: Isaac Sailmaker ( Memento June 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- Isaac Sailmaker on artnet
- Isaac Sailmaker at askart
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sailmaker, Isaac |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Zeilmaker, Isaac |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch painter who worked in England |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1633 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | unsure: Scheveningen |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 28, 1721 |
| Place of death | London |