The Dutch Calm

In the 1650s a handful of Dutch painters did something odd. They painted the sea on days when nothing happened. No storms and no battles, just boats waiting for wind, sails hanging slack and every hull doubled in the water. Collectors called these pictures calms, and bought them by the dozen.

Jan van de Cappelle was a dyer by trade who painted on the side, and he may have been the best of them. Aelbert Cuyp brought the same golden stillness to the rivers around Dordrecht. Reinier Nooms had been a sailor, and you can tell: his rigging is always right.

The prints

Van de Cappelle's Fishing Boats in a Calm and Nooms's Coast Scene are in the shop now. We print the calms a little warmer than most reproductions, the way the varnished paintings look on a gallery wall, and proof each one against the museum's scan before it goes to paper.