File:Seascape with Sailors Sheltering from a Rainstorm RMG BHC0759.tiff

A group of sailors huddle, in a cave, beneath a rugged cliff. Torrential rain falls diagonally from the thick black clouds which hover menacingly above. A smooth, flat sea is rendered in silvery-grey tones. While darker areas suggest the shadows of the boats. Additionally, pale brown and green areas in the shallows hint at the emergence of rocks from beneath the surface of the water. The sailors, on the left, are composed into a tight group. Interactions between them are intimated by facial expressions and physical gestures. They are variously occupied. On the far left one drinks from a barrel. Next to him a man huddles wrapped in a shawl. While other figures stand nearby or are seated. They are accompanied by a small dog on the right. One of the seated figures is looking out towards a sailor, who remains on one of the boats. He, in turn, looks over towards the sheltering group. Their boats, with sails lowered and furled, are anchored in the shallow water. While, previously, the figures have been interpreted as smugglers sheltering from a storm, a more convincing reading suggests that they are in fact fishermen. Their humble appearance lends to the idea that Peeters’s intention was to portray them as quasi-heroic figures, happily living an idealized, rural existence. In stark contrast to contemporary scenes of tempests, this painting proposes a positive outcome to the storm. Little damage has occurred to these sailors’ boats and the men are protected by the cave in which they take shelter. An incandescent rainbow cleaves into the painting, on the right, and is reflected in the still water behind the smaller boat.

Depictions of rainbows were extremely rare in seventeenth century visual arts and were considered, by a generally Christian public, as evocative of Noah’s ‘everlasting covenant’ with God in the aftermath of the Flood. The development of analytic geometry in the Netherlands, however, engendered various explanations for the appearances of rainbows in the sky. In 1637, Descartes’s ‘Geometry’ had attempted to explain the refraction of light to a receptive public. By 1687, Spinoza directly addressed the rainbow as a scientific phenomenon, observing that ‘… to the theologian the rainbow is the glorious sign of the Covenant, while the physicist judges it, in accordance with the basic laws imparted to created things by the Lord God, as being caused by refraction and reflection of the sun’s rays as they fall upon an infinite multitude of tiny waterdrops …’ In Peeters’s painting, the rainbow is limited to only three colours: red, blue and white. While, this tripartite symbol may allude to the potently Christian Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it may equally refer to civic strength within a specifically Dutch context.

Stylistically Peeters portrayed storm scenes as dramatic, theatrical interpretations. However, he remained generally attached to observable reality, restrained by the Dutch tradition of realism and to the naturalistic mode evolved by Jan Porcellis (circa 1584-1632). Peeters began his storm scenes in the 1630s using van Eertvelt's high-keyed colour effects and created bursts of light breaking through thickly layered clouds to activate compositions. The drama of his tempests is enhanced by prominently featured figural elements such as vessels struggling in the waves or threatened amid rocks. He elaborates this mood of evocation by piling rocks into distinctive bizarre thrusting shapes that sometimes form natural arches. This motif has been adopted in this seascape. Here, the undercut jagged forms, which stand against the battering of the elements, suggest the endurance of the land in its conflict with the sea. His storms combine the basic compositions, ship types, use of flickering chiaroscuro and strong colour contrasts of Dutch art, with a treatment of figures and coastlines deriving from the Italian tradition.

Born in Antwerp into a prominent artistic family, Bonaventura Peeters the Elder was the brother of artists Gillis, Jan and Clara Peeters and the uncle of Bonaventura Peeters the Younger. Comparatively little is known about his early life. Although the intimate and accurate knowledge of ships evinced in his many marine paintings hint at an early life spent at sea. De Bie commended Peeters on his delicate and convincing treatment of seas, calms and tempests. While Houbraken succinctly described the artist as a proficient and naturalistic master of ‘air, water, rocks and beaches.’ In 1634, Peeters joined the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, continuing to live and work in the city until the early 1640s. He died in 1652. The increasing affluence of the Dutch merchant classes led to a demand for small-scale cabinet paintings to hang in domestic interiors and Peeters seems to have specialized in this type of work. The painting is signed 'B. P'.