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DEACESSIONED October 24, 2024
View across the River Y toward Amsterdam
Ludolf Bakhuizen (Dutch, 1631–1708)
about 1660
Medium/Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
42.2 x 49.5 cm (16 5/8 x 19 1/2 in.)
Credit Line
Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow Fund
Accession Number49.1708
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
Ludolf Bakhuizen was among the most successful marine painters in Amsterdam in the second half of the 17th century. This painting’s silver-gray tonality and simple composition divided into three superimposed zones (ground, water, city)—perhaps derived from 16th-century panoramic maps and city views—is characteristic of Bakhuizen’s earliest works. Bakhuizen’s sensitivity to incidental detail (notice especially the windswept woman at lower right and the men rushing to lower the sail of the foreground boat) suggests the force of the impending storm. Several monuments, including the high-steepled Zuiderkerk and Westerkerk at left and center and Noorderkerk at center-right, are visible in the background.
InscriptionsLower right: L B [...] K [...]
Provenance1824, Abraham Hume (b. 1749 - d. 1838), 2nd Bart., London and Wormley Bury, Hertford, England [see note 1]; by descent to his daughter, Amelia Sophia Hume (b. 1788 - d. 1814), Belton, Lincolnshire; to her daughter, Lady Sophia Frances Cust (b. 1811 - d. 1882); to her son, Brownlow Richard Christopher Tower (b. 1851 - d. 1932), Hawthorne House, Shropshire [see note 2]; to his son, Geoffrey Egerton Tower (b. 1891 - d. 1949), Hawthorne House [see note 3]; May 18, 1949, G. E. Tower sale, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London, lot 154, to Horace Buttery, London; 1949, sold by Buttery to the MFA for $701. (Accession Date: December 8, 1949)
NOTES:
[1] He lent this to the British Institution in 1824, cat. no. 92, as "Sea Piece, with a distant View of Amsterdam."
[2] A handwritten label on the reverse of the painting's stretcher reads: "This picture from the collection of Sir Abraham Hume Bt. was left me by my dear mother after her death, 21st December 1882 / Brownlow Tower."
[3] A handwritten label on the reverse of the painting's stretcher reads "This picture was left me by my father, Brownlow Richard Christopher Tower, ob. May 18th 1932 / Geoffrey Edgerton Tower / 13.IV.40."
NOTES:
[1] He lent this to the British Institution in 1824, cat. no. 92, as "Sea Piece, with a distant View of Amsterdam."
[2] A handwritten label on the reverse of the painting's stretcher reads: "This picture from the collection of Sir Abraham Hume Bt. was left me by my dear mother after her death, 21st December 1882 / Brownlow Tower."
[3] A handwritten label on the reverse of the painting's stretcher reads "This picture was left me by my father, Brownlow Richard Christopher Tower, ob. May 18th 1932 / Geoffrey Edgerton Tower / 13.IV.40."