Dutch warships.

Wenceslaus (or Wenzel) Hollar (1607-77) was an Anglo-Czech artist, and one of the greatest and most prolific printmakers of the 17th century. His art  reveals his immensely wide subject range, and reflects the priorities of his time: religion, mythology, satire, landscapes, geography and maps, portraits, women, costumes, sports, natural history, architecture, heraldry, numismatics, ornaments, title-pages and initials. 

On the right a Dutch warship, viewed from off the port quarter, sails towards the left. She carries a spritsail, and a spritsail topsail, in addition to the three sails on the foremast and mainmast. On the left, in the distance, a fight is in progress between Dutch and other vessels.

 The date of this etching (1647), undertaken when Hollar had moved to Antwerp to escape the turmoil of the English Civil war, suggests that he was depicting the very late stages of the Eighty Years' War, where the Dutch Republic's main foe was Spain. Later he made several prints depicting battles between the English and Dutch fleets.

See:

http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/tag/wenceslaus-hollar/

Richard Pennington, <em>A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-1677</em> (Cambridge, 1982),  p. 217 (no. 1268).

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art          June 2017