(Antwerp 1614–1652 Hoboken)
A fortified harbour with a Galleon and Galley at anchor,
signed and dated lower right: Peeters 1639,
oil on canvas, 77 x 118 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Galerie Finck, Brussels, 1967; sale, Cornette de St. Cyr, Paris, 28 November 2017, lot 18;
Private collection, Belgium

The present scene of an Oriental port, guarded by a three tiered bastion, with dark skinned figures on the foreshore to the right and a galleon and galley at anchor behind is a typically capricious and carefully executed work from the hand of Bonaventura Peeters, arguably the foremost Flemish marine artist of the mid-seventeenth century. The present scene reflects the contemporary Antwerp collecting taste for the exotic, at a time when fashionable Wunderkammer (such ‘cabinets of curiosities’ having first been depicted in 1599) were full of foreign species samples and artefacts. Here the magisterial forms powerful warships lying becalmed, rendered with luminosity beneath a dramatically clouded sky, show the versatility of an artist particularly noted for his dark, stormy vistas and foaming seas.

The soaring mountain behind may be derived from Scandinavian examples which the master may have seen on his sea voyages – Peeters once painted a purported view of the port of Archangel in the far North of Russia, while his brother Jan had travelled in the Mediterranean and may have shown Bonaventura prospects of southern ports. The bastion in the present work appears in other Bonaventura compositions, and may be based on an actual fortification.

Bonaventura came from an accomplished family of Antwerp painters. His siblings, the aforementioned Jan the Elder, Gillis the Elder and Catharina were also artists of relative renown, mainly specialising in marine pictures. In addition to his carefully registered views of ships and ports, Peeters was employed by the city of Antwerp to make maps recording military engagements such as the Siege of Kallo.