I’ve just spent the last day and a half in the van de Veldo room in the Queen’s House, surrounded by gorgeous oil paintings by William van de Velde the Younger, who moved to London in the mid-seventeenth century and brought with him a whole tradition of maritime painting.
I can’t quite process everything yet, from our lively end-of-session discussion of cannibalism and Life of Pi, to a wonderful paper on contemporary art practices and “shipwreck as failed potentiality” to the always-reliable Josiah Blackmore on profundity, depth, and early modern poetics. Plus lots more, about which I may write soon.
This painting is pretty amazing…very eerie. The ships appear to be ghosts ships – very fluid, as they appear to be weightless as they float on the water. The smoke also signals death as if each of the ships will soon collapse into the sea.