A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

865. A COAST SCENE.

Jan van de Cappelle (Dutch: painted about 1650-1680).

Of this painter, whose works have of recent years become popular with collectors, the Dutch writers have left no record. Nor has anything been discovered about him beyond the fact that, on the occasion of his marriage in 1653, he received the freedom of the city of Amsterdam. One may connect with this fact the state barge, introduced in some of his pictures,—or the corporation barge, it may be,—much resembling the barges belonging to the City and the City Companies which not long ago might still be seen on the Thames at London, and some of which survive, transformed into College barges at Oxford. Cappelle's works are comparatively rare; they show that he loved a calm sea, lit up with warm rays.