A Dutch convoy in the herring fleet – a penschilderij

Adriaen van Salm spent his entire career in Delfshaven, a borough of the port city of Rotterdam. He was active as a schoolmaster and in 1706 became a master draftsman in the city’s guild. He specialized in penschilderen – a method of painting or drawing in ink with a pen and wash on a prepared panel or canvas – which produced highly refined monochromatic images. The technique became especially popular with marine painters like Willem van de Velde the Elder beginning in the 1640s, but it had been employed to great effect earlier in the century in works like Hendrick Goltzius’ learned Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus (Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze) (c. 1600-03; Philadelphia Museum of Art).

This small-scale panel depicts a fleet of herring busses accompanied by a large man-of-war at the center of the composition. The herring industry was a staple for the Dutch economy on account of the Republic's advantageous position along the North Sea. Small investors pooled their funds to outfit a ship and could then profit from the catch proportionally to their investment. The development of the herring buss enabled fisherman to stay out for longer periods of time because the fish could be gutted, salted and stored onboard, thus reducing the need for returning to port. These relatively small boats and their valuable haul were susceptible to pirates and enemy warships and, for this reason, were often protected by larger armed vessels.

A somewhat larger variant of this composition last appeared Christie’s, New York, 31 January 1997, lot 68. A second variant of similar scale to the present painting sold Dorotheum, Vienna, 9 November 2022, lot 81.