Dutch Delft Tile Picture, Fleet of Ships, Blue & White, Framed

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Description

Dutch Delft Tile Picture, Fleet of Ships, Blue & White, Framed
The Netherlands, 19th century

A whole fleet under sail, … Read more Dutch Delft Tile Picture, Fleet of Ships, Blue & White, Framed
The Netherlands, 19th century

A whole fleet under sail, painted across twenty blue and white Delft tiles and framed as a picture. A three-decker rides at the center, seen from behind with her carved stern and a pennant streaming from the masthead; two more big ships stand off to the left under the Dutch flag, smaller sail trails away to the horizon, and two boats full of men pull across the foreground water toward the flagship. Every stroke is hand-painted in cobalt on white.

The pleasure of it is the sky and the sea. The clouds are laid in soft washes and the swell in hundreds of short strokes that carry straight across the joints between the tiles, so the picture reads as one image and not as twenty squares. Up close you see the grid; from across the room you see weather.

It works over a mantel, on a stair landing, in a dining room where blue and white already has a foothold, or in a study or an office where the shipping subject earns its place. It is happy alongside plain painted paneling and just as happy against a strong color — the blue is deep enough to carry. It hangs like a painting, no plate hangers or special mounts required.

Dimensions
Framed: 24½ inches high (62.2 cm) x 29½ inches wide (74.9 cm) x 1¼ inches deep (3.2 cm)
Sight: 20¼ inches high (51.4 cm) x 25½ inches wide (64.8 cm)

Condition
The panel is well preserved. Two tiles in the sky have been invisibly repaired.

A Little History
Delft tiles are earthenware under an opaque white glaze, invented to imitate the Chinese porcelain arriving in Europe in the 1600s. The blue is painted straight onto the raw glaze, which is unforgiving — there is no correcting a stroke. Multi-tile pictures were made in Holland from the seventeenth century, and marine scenes were a favorite subject for as long as the Dutch had a fleet worth painting. A panel like this one, after the great seventeenth-century sea painters, was made for a hall or an overmantel and would have been commissioned rather than bought off a shelf.

(Ref: NY9976-nran) See less