(Antwerp 1590–1652)
A naval battle,
traces of a monogram lower centre (on the driftwood): AE,
oil on canvas, 141 x 207 cm, framed

Andries van Eertvelt was one of the most important of the earliest generation of Flemish marine painters. In his day van Eertvelt was a man of distinction whose marine paintings were appreciated abroad, some being exported as far as Seville and Lisbon. The Antwerp-born artist’s work, with its busy, brightly coloured and dramatic style, was highly prized by his contemporaries and he had an eager clientele in the Dutch Republic. Indeed, his artistic qualities were praised by his later biographer Cornelis de Bie (1627–1715) in his Gulden Cabinet of 1661 and suggested that he must have been to sea as a young man. Van Eertvelt specialised in the new subject matter of naval engagements, events and shipwrecks, in which he combined the tradition of the marines painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the preceding century with that of the pioneering Dutch master in Haarlem, Hendrick Cornelisz. Vroom (circa 1562–1640). The influence of Vroom in particular took a hold on Van Eertvelt, whose early known oeuvre comprised mainly of small seascapes in the manner of the master. It was only later, having been influenced by various visits to Genoa between 1628 and 1630, where he encountered the work of his compatriot Cornelis de Wael, that he decided to paint on a grander and more ambitious scale. This work can, therefore, almost certainly be dated to the latter part of his career.

A comparable work Port with Warships is conserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 595); another one was sold at Bernaerts, Antwerp, 30 March 1998, lot 6.