File:A Dutch Ship Passing a Fort RMG BHC0928FXD.jpg

Abraham Storck was one of several Dutch marine painters who produced fantastical views of Mediterranean ports during the second half of the 17th century. Merchant shipping appears alongside architectural ruins, usually depicted in the crystal-clear colours of Italian art of the period.

In this scene of a Dutch ship passing a port, however, the artist, who has signed his upright format on a block of stone in the right foreground, has adopted a colour scheme of golden browns and ochres. The composition is very clear-cut. The rugged, partly ruined classicist architecture built on a cliff takes up the entire left half of the picture space. Here, the spectator’s gaze is led uphill along a city wall and through a gate towards a massive round tower behind it. In the stage-like foreground a group of men is resting by the harbour wall in the centre and further to the right an elaborate gun barrel has been left by the rocky shore.

The view opens to the sea in the right half of the composition. The Dutch ship is seen just off stern, its masts rising up almost to the height of the tower. Further ships are depicted in the distance. A strong breeze has risen and a fully occupied rowing boat is carefully struggling across the waves in the shade underneath the cliff. The scene is dramatically lit from the left, increasing the theatrical effect of the painting.

Such paintings anticipated the popular 18th-century Italian capriccio. Storck, who was born in 1644, trained and worked with his father and became a member of the Guild of St Luke in Amsterdam. He probably never went to Italy himself, but he would have known Italian scenery and architectural prints and other artists’ paintings. The style of his river and coastal scenes was influenced by fellow Dutch artists Ludolf Bakhuizen, Willem van de Velde, the Younger and Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraten. As can be seen in this painting he showed considerable accuracy in depicting ships' rigging and technical details and great skill depicting the human figure, through characterization and attention to costume and detail. The staffage figures are given an air of ‘banditti’ character, romanticizing the foreign scene if not contrasting it to the Dutch prosperity represented in the leaving ships.