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Adriaen van Salm worked as a schoolmaster and textile merchant in Delfshaven near Rotterdam. He also specialised in pen-painting, a branch of Dutch seventeenth-century maritime painting that experimented with the pictorial effects of blurring the boundaries between painting and the more linear graphic arts. Such scenes were executed in grisaille, a black and white rendering. This scene shows various busses, herring fishing vessels, retrieving their nets in a fresh breeze. The artist has atmospherically captured the rolling of the boats on the waves under the clear sky, but the composition is actually carefully built around the central perspective created by the arrangement of the ships towards the low horizon and accentuated by the contrasting flat diagonal of the advancing waves.
During the seventeenth century the herring fishery formed one of the pillars of the Dutch economy. Van Salm’s tackling of the theme reflects the industry’s importance, but at the same time the picture relates to the tradition of the undramatic Dutch seascape depicting everyday life in the North Sea, founded by artists such as Jan Porcellis in the first half of the seventeenth century.
Title
Dutch Herring Fishery
Date
late 17th C
Medium
oil & grisaille on panel
Measurements
H 32 x W 39.5 cm
Accession number
BHC0967
Work type
Painting