After traversing the many, many paintings at the National Gallery in London, I started to notice that I was pulled toward certain types of art. The paintings that was pulling my attention was painting of landscapes or of ships, especially those lacking the presence of people. I am Fascinated by the painters ability to create such realistic feeling depictions of thing. I also saw a few paintings that included as the main subject a dog, of bird. The immense amount of detail and presences those paintings were displaying was amazing. I am not very interested in portrait painting usually however there was several painting of portraits that I did enjoy mainly because they felt simple and beautiful. After figuring out what type of paintings I liked, I looped back to review a few paintings that I quickly skimmed over for a better look. One of the paintings that I came across was painted by Willem van de Velde (1633-1707) A Dutch Yacht Saluting. The center ship is a ‘statenjacht’ (a vessel used by Dutch Officials). Willem was the leading Dutch marine painter of his age. This painting depicts many ships that sails are lacking wind with amber grey clouds in the distance, a calm sense of stillness with only light breeze on the flags signaling any kind of movement. The painting it self feels warm and soothing, as if they just arrived after a journey. I love how much detail is in the ships and how thy sky can be filled with large clouds but yet feel calm.
A similar painting the was created by Jan van de Cappelle (1626-1679), A shipping Scene with a Dutch Yacht Firing a Salute. The paintings have similar feeling in stillness with its mirror water and the flags falling without a breeze. But yet they have a different mood to them, there is less amber and more dark tones in this painting. The sky feels likes it has more energy in it even though it has less movement than the painting by Willem. Both of the paintings show Dutch vessels in a sense of stillness, the one by Willem feels like the movement just stopped while the one painted by Cappelle feels like the movement is about to start. It is interesting how they both have included the clouds as strong narratives to their paintings. Art continues to fascinate me by how much that can be told by still image created over many hours of hard work. I am happy to have had the opportunity to be able to view all these amazing works of art!
Theatre in London U of A 