Calm on Zuider Zee: A Zuider Zee fishing haven

Edward William Cooke first visited Holland in 1837, and he returned for numerous visits over the next four decades. He had seen and admired Dutch shipping vessels in London from a young age, and he included Dutch boats in the book of engravings Fifty Plates of Shipping & Craft, that he produced as a teenager in 1829. As soon as Cooke arrived in the Low Countries, he became infatuated with Dutch coastal life. In 1876 Cooke embarked upon a ten-day tour to Holland, and he painted and exhibited Calm on Zuider Zee: A Zuider Zee fishing haven at the Royal Academy that same year alongside another Dutch work.
Dutch marine pictures were of particular popularity at the time, due to their similarity to Dutch Old Masters. Cooke acknowledged his debt to these masters before him, by sometimes humorously signing his works as ‘Van Cook’; this sobriquet can be seen on the bow of the smaller boat to the right of the composition. The present lot is one of the artist’s ‘calms’, depicting tranquil waters as the fishermen prepare to set sail on the Zuider zee, a large shallow bay in the north west of the Netherlands. Cooke often included a human element to his marine scenes, depicting with charm the symbiotic relationship the sailors had with the sea that they lived off.
This work was sold in Cooke’s Posthumous sale in these rooms on 22 May 1880.