LONDON.- This exhibition will celebrate the National Maritime Museum’s unrivalled collection of 16th- and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish maritime paintings. These seascapes and coastal views of the Stuart Age are of outstanding quality, whilst the Queen’s House itself once housed a studio for featured father and son artists, the van de Veldes.

Turmoil and Tranquillity will focus on the emerging genre of maritime art in the Low Countries in the 17th century. The exhibition will highlight the key maritime painters of the period and demonstrates the rich aesthetic and narrative potential of the genre. By displaying both Dutch and Flemish artists, the exhibition will highlight the reciprocal influences within the Netherlands and illustrate the emergence of the seascape as a distinct art form.

The period 1550–1700 saw dramatic shifts in the political, geographic and religious structure of Europe, in which the Dutch Republic became a great maritime power with settlements and trading posts in the East Indies, Africa and the Americas. Evolving from a broader tradition of highly coloured landscape painting, infused with religious elements, the seascape developed to become a distinctive genre of its own as part of the artistic Golden Age fuelled by the mercantile power of the protestant Dutch provinces.

Turmoil and Tranquillity will examine the rising demand for maritime art as an independent painting style, with works by early Flemish masters including followers of Jan Brueghel the Elder and Joachim Patinir, Cornelis van Wieringen and Andries van Eertvelt.

The exhibition will display highly dramatic seascapes and depictions of storms and shipwrecks which characterised mid-17th century Dutch seascapes. The use of allegory, with frequent examples depicting ships as symbols for the soul is traced in paintings such as the Wreck of the ‘Amsterdam’ by an anonymous Flemish artist and Adam Willaerts’ Jonah and the Whale.

The interplay between paintings of tranquil coastal waters and the assertion of a Dutch national identity is explored through the work of the principal artists of the period including Jan Porcellis, Simon de Vlieger, Ludolf Backhuysen and Jacob van Ruisdael.

In an age distinguished by Dutch exploration and expansion, the demand for ‘exotic’ maritime paintings and topographical views was fuelled by the new merchant class. Depictions of Mediterranean and Scandinavian scenes and other foreign shores, are examined through works by Hendrick van Minderhout, Simon de Vlieger, and two celebrated expatriates in Italy, Gasper van Wittel (called ‘Vanvitelli’) and Pieter Mulier the Younger, ‘the Cavaliere Tempesta’.

The overlap of seascape and history painting, brought about by a growing demand for paintings recording battles at sea and illustrious naval heroes, led to the success and international reputations of Dutch and Flemish artists. This is illustrated with works by Abraham Storck and the Willem van de Veldes, who moved to London at the request of Charles II in 1672-73 and for the next 20 years had their studio in the Queen’s House, now the home of this exhibition.