Laura Gascoigne

How two Dutchmen introduced marine art to Britain

Turner claimed that an image of a storm-tossed vessel by Willem the Younger had made him a painter

‘English Ship Lying-To in Gale’ by Willem van de Velde the Younger. Credit: © National Maritime Museum, London 
issue 11 March 2023

In March 1675 the Keeper of His Majesty’s Lodgings at Greenwich received an order for ‘Three pairs of shutters for the three windows in a lower room, at the Queen’s building next to the park (where the Dutch painters work’). Willem van de Velde and his son, also called Willem, would have preferred a studio with north light, but they weren’t complaining.

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