Willem van de Velde the Elder

Willem van de Velde the Elder ( Gerard Sibelius , after Godfrey Kneller )

The Battle of Schooneveld (1674)

Willem van de Velde the Elder (* around 1611 in Leiden , United Provinces of the Netherlands , † December 16, 1693 in Greenwich ) was a Dutch painter .

Act

The artist belonged to the painter dynastie van de Velde, which produced numerous artists. His brother Esaias (* around 1590/1591), his cousin Jan II (* 1593), his nephews Anthonie (* 1617, son of Esaias) and Jan III. (* around 1620, son of Jan II) and his own sons Willem the Younger (* 1633) and Adriaan (baptized 1638) were all painters.

In his youth, Willem van de Velde the Elder went to sea, then he turned to painting, specializing in ship motifs and battle scenes. For a time he was the official painter of the Dutch fleet.

He married Judith van Leeuven in Leiden in 1631, who gave him the following sons: Willem van de Velde the Younger , born in Leiden in 1633 and the second oldest, Adriaen van de Velde, baptized in 1638 in the Old Church in Amsterdam . Like their father, both turned to painting.

In 1672, at a time when the Netherlands was at war with England, Willem entered the service of King Charles II of England. His elder son accompanied him to England.

Works

A series of "naval battles" (1665, 1668, 1669), including the four paintings from 1657 to 1659, which illustrate the victories of Admiral Tromp and belong to his family, can be seen in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam .

• The battle of Terheide
• Episode from the second Anglo-Dutch War: The Battle of Bergen aan Zee on August 12, 1665
• Dutch yachts at the harbor

literature

• Dictionnaire de la peinture flamande et hollandaise du Moyen-Âge à nos jours , Paris, 1989, Larousse (source)
• Hermann Arthur Lier:  Velde . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 39, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1895, pp. 557-563.

Web links

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