Abraham Jansz. Storck

(Amsterdam circa 1635-circa 1710)

The mock sea battle on the Ij in honour of Tsar Peter, 1697

Footnotes

Provenance
Collection of John Primatt Redcliffe Redcliffe-Maud, Baron Redcliffe-Maud (1906-1982), by whom offered
Sale, Sotheby's, London, 13 December 1978, lot 14 (sold for £6500)
Sale, Sotheby's, London, 11 December 1985, lot 67
Private Collection, France, until June 2005
Mr and Mrs Anthony Inder Rieden
Collection of a Family Trust

Exhibition
Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, and Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,Lof der Zeevaart. De Hollandse zeeschilders van de 17de eeuw 1996-7, cat. no. 93
The Hague, Bredius Museum, 10 December 2019 - 1 March 2020

Literature
G. de Beer, The Golden Age of Dutch Marine Painting. The Inder Rieden Collection, Leiden, 2019, vol. 3, cat. no. 64, pp. 998-108, ill

In the late summer of 1697 the Tsar, Peter the Great (1672-1725), visited Amsterdam as part of a planned tour of western Europe. He had acceded to the throne in 1682, initially sharing it with his half brother Ivan V, but after the latter's death in 1696 he became sole ruler of a Russia that was much in need of modernisation. Peter set out the same year, incognito, on a tour of Sweden, moving on to the Netherlands, England and parts of the Holy Roman Empire with the aim of learning from developments those countries had made and incorporating them into his reforms. One of his ambitions was to develop Russia into a major maritime power, so learning about the naval capabilities of the Dutch Republic must have been high on his agenda. Since the early 17th century the Dutch had traded with Russia and the Tsar had had an established relationship with visiting Dutch regents and merchants, even speaking to them in their own language. His first week in the Republic in August 1697 was spent working in the shipyard in Zaandam gathering practical experience as a ship's carpenter. From there he and his retinue of 200 made their way to Amsterdam where he was received with much fanfare, the event marked with banquets and fireworks.

On 1 September 1697, fortunately a day of fine weather, a mock sea battle was staged in his honour on the IJ, the expanse of water that lies before the city of Amsterdam. Yachts had been commandeered from all over the north of Holland for the event and fitted with guns, muskets being distributed to the crew of any unarmed craft. It must have been a remarkable sight with the two opposing squadrons numbering 42 vessels between them and scores of other boats carrying spectators in the throng. A print with detailed annotation by Jan Luyken (fig.1) helpfully provides us with a record both of the manoeuvres and with names of the key people who took part in them. The commander in chief of the event was vice-admiral of the Admiralty of Amsterdam, Gillis Schey (1644-1703) who was aboard a large ship belonging to the VOC (the Dutch East India Company) whose stern we can see in Storck's painting to the left of centre. We know from the passenger list that this yacht carried many of the most prominent attendees such as the Tsar himself, the Russian envoys, a number of burgomasters and leaders of the VOC Chamber of Amsterdam. However, in this painting the Tsar's standard – the double headed eagle on a blue stripe - is flying from the boeierjacht in the left foreground, and on close inspection one can make out the figure of the Tsar himself, (fig. 2) clearly abandoning any attempt at anonymity and wearing his distinctive blue ceremonial costume, seated at the stern of the rowing boat that is drawing alongside the yacht. Evidently he was so enthused with the mock battle that he asked to board a vessel that could take him wherever the action was most intense, hence the transfer to the yacht, although it must have been quite a challenge to navigate through the crowded waters even in a smaller vessel. Storck manages to convey a sense of the intense activity by including so many craft in his painting, all facing in various different directions with their flags and pennants flapping in the breeze.

Storck was a native of Amsterdam and from a family of painters. Works by him of the same mock sea battle and other maritime events that took place during the Tsar's visit are in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum (inv. No. SA 5611) and Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. No. A.0280) respectively. The present composition of The mock sea battle on the IJ on 1 September 1697 was clearly one of the most successful of his representations of the Tsar's visit since five other versions of it are known, (now missing), but photographs of these suggest they are at least in part the work of studio hands and it is likely that the present work is the prototype from which they were taken.