Samantha DiBacco
Dr. Dujakovic
ARTH-105-001
4 December, 2018
Phase 2: Visual-Historical Analysis
Dutch painter Ludolf Backhuysen painted Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast in 1667 as an oil on canvas. Its size is 114.3cm by 167.3cm, and the masterpiece is currently displayed in the National Gallery of Art in their exhibit: “Water, Wind, and Waves: Marine Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age.” This era was a time of prosperity for the Netherlands, yet fortune and a successful economy came at a dangerous maritime price. The overall mood of Ludolf Backhuysen’s painting Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast is turmoil, despair, and sadness. The artist communicates the frightening mood to the viewer as sailors meet the hardest struggle of their life: trying to stay alive and the difficulty and danger sailors had sailing on the ocean.
The prosperous Dutch Golden Age did not just arise out of thin air. To set the historical context of the seventeenth century, it is imperative to learn about their rise to glory. Many artists, especially painters, paid homage to their history through their artwork by reflecting through the mediums’ expressions the current political atmosphere. The Dutch army defeated Spanish forces through a revolt against Spanish rule. The struggle took 80 years, and the Dutch persevered against Spain and created the Dutch Republic. After accomplishing such a feat, their wealth grew tremendously due to their geographical location and riches of the sea. The sea was significant for maritime culture due to the land being surrounded by water, and there was a shortage of arable land. The Dutch had shipping enterprises in trade such as metal, grain, cloth, timber, salt, and marble. The economically sound middle class supported population growth, trade routes, and through technological advances great social human interaction in shipbuilding fluyts, which were the bulky cargoes for supplies and goods to be traded. The fisherman, sailors, and traders thrived because the Netherlands were a natural crossroads location for other nations’ traffic and interacting with European trade. They became leaders in sea-faring, transport, commerce, and security; the water was essential to their economic and naval successes. Stated earlier in the introduction, the Dutch did not have a perfect environment for which the economy thrived. There were many hardships fought to climb to the top of the commercial activity, and to generate such large amounts of commerce from industries in order to stay as the highest respected world trade leader for an entire century.
A variety of factors contributed to hardships and voyages failing. During stormy weather, there was a sense of incredible helplessness of sailing ships because there was frequent incompetence of crew members and captains. There was no real set standards for people to come aboard, so many people on these vessels essentially were put in charge during emergencies and expected to act, when in reality they had no idea what to do. The cargo was stressed when battling the unexpected hazards of the cold and ocean current. There were problems of navigation in uncharted seas, which caused sailors to act under lethal stress and trying not to panic when they faced unimaginable occurrences. Sea life was not easy to begin with since many sailors got sick, and there was a lack of sanitation and not as much medical knowledge known among the crew. These difficulties happened frequently enough that a few marine painters decided to convey the reality of what maritime life was truly depicted as.
Before Ludolf Backhuysen painted dramas of the sky and sea, he had several other jobs prior to becoming a painter. He worked as a clerk in a government office under his father, and then became a printmaker and a draftsmen making pen paintings.
In Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast, the
Ludolf Backhuysen’s Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast illustrates the difficulty sailors had sailing blindly into the ocean, and the danger, loss of life, and despair that came from the travels. The viewer strongly feels the astonishing somber mood of the dramatic piece. Due to the mood, the audience sees past the prosperity of the Dutch Golden Age in the seventeenth century and now understands the struggle and sacrifice that was made for the successful economy.
Bibliography
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Tempest Painting.” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 16, No. 2/3 (1986): 139-149. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3780634.pdf
Goedde, Lawrence O. Tempest and Shipwreck in Dutch and Flemish Art. Pennsylvania: The
Pennsylvania State University, 1989.
Huntress, Keith. Narratives of Shipwrecks and Disasters. Iowa: The Iowa State University Press,
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Keyes, George S. Mirror of Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Wheelock Jr., Arthur K. “Ludolf Backhuysen” NGA Online Editions (April 24 2014).
https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.5957.html