Willem van de Velde, The Shore at Scheveningen

A brisk wind brings a small fleet of fishing pinks to shore, tossed and buffeted by the choppy waves. Here and there a fitful sun breaks through the fast moving clouds. It lights up the long curve of the wide bay and the high dunes, but there’s a sense of mistiness, suggesting a fine spray from the sea or soft sand blowing. Houses snuggle down in the shelter of the dunes, but the two spires of the ancient church strike upwards. Tough murrain grass sprouts through the sand and low, coarse-leaved shrubs blown flat by relentless wind hug the side of the nearby dune.

Already beached, two vessels stand on planks, ready to be lifted and carried out on the next tide. An unneeded anchor rusts in the wet sand beside them. One boat has its sails neatly stowed; on the other, the sail is drying in the wind. A man accompanied by a child chats to one of the fisherman, and beyond them, men and women peg nets out to dry on the long line of poles set into the sand. Dogs swim, play, tease the horses or bound down the sandy hillside.

A solitary man plods across the beach with a heavy fish basket on his back. He heads towards the village past a covered wagon that ploughs to a halt through a puddle left by the tide. It has the arms of Amsterdam on the back and a soberly dressed man, an official perhaps, prepares to be handed down from it by an attendant. To one side of it, another attendant holds out his hat for coins from a man with a group of more elegantly dressed people chatting together at their ease.

This is Scheveningen, three miles from The Hague. At the time it was a small fishing village, but it was becoming, as the scene suggests, a resort for the wealthy and the bourgeoisie. These are not local lads wading up to their knees to throw sticks for their dog, but well-dressed young men out to play. Picturesque views of the coast and the people who worked there were very popular with collectors and others, but it would be the kind of people standing by the wagon who could afford them, not fishermen.

The picture was painted when Willem van de Velde the Younger was working with his father, Willem the Elder, and his younger brother Adriaen. Adriaen was largely a figure and landscape painter, and the two collaborated quite frequently. The covered wagon appears in several of Adriaen’s paintings, including Figures on the Coast at Scheveningen (Royal Collection). The view in this picture is by Willem the Younger but the wagon and figures are the work of his brother.