Sketch of a sailing ship no. 1

<strong>Ships and harbours</strong>

When Petrus van der Velden decided to focus completely on his new profession as an artist in 1867, he began with studies of ships and harbours. This is unsurprising given that marine painting is a quintessentially Dutch genre of art.

Van der Velden developed few of the sketches into finished paintings, but the studies that remain provide a remarkable record of his working process. A reviewer who saw them exhibited in New Zealand in the early 1900s had this to say:

<em>The honesty and truth of the painter are seen, too, in the collection of drawings of ships and boats. Here, block and line, rope and cable, are drawn in their proper place; nothing is missing, nothing skimped.</em>