Willem van de Velde

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Willem van de Velde
1633-1707
A States Yacht in a Light Air with many other Vessels off the Shore
Point of the brush and dark gray wash over black chalk, on paper.
7 1/2 x 10 1/8 inches (191 x 257 mm)
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) in 1909.
I, 147

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Notes: 

Most likely, the drawing is a record (rather than a preparatory study), made with the help of the studio, after a lost painting of the 1660s--which would explain the drawing's authentic signature upon a sheet with technical faults.

Inscription: 

Signed with initials at lower left, in brown ink, "W.V.V.J". Numbered on the verso, at center, in graphite, "No. 5"; in the lower left corner, in brown ink, "262"; and at lower right corner, in broad pen and dark brown ink, "2".
Watermark: Countermark: Letters "PB" in a half-cartouche or "PBD" (similar to Churchill, nos. 6-7 and Heawood, no. 424A: 1654-79).

Provenance: 
Robert Stayner Holford (1808-92), London and Westonbirt, Gloucestershire (Lugt 2243); his sale, London, Christie's, 11-14 July 1893, lot 680 (to Fairfax Murray for £20.0.0); Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), London and Florence; from whom purchased through Galerie Alexandre Imbert, Rome, in 1909 by Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), New York (no mark; see Lugt 1509); his son, J. P. Morgan, Jr. (1867-1943), New York.
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Associated names: 

Velde, Willem van de, 1633-1707, Studio of.
Holford, Robert Stayner, 1808-1892, former owner.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.

Bibliography: 

Collection J. Pierpont Morgan : Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London : Privately printed, 1905-1912, I, 147, repr.
Jane Shoaf Turner, with contributions by Felice Stampfle, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, New York, 2006, cat. no. 315.

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