Abraham (Sturckenburch) Storck
Netherlands, Holland, (1635 or 1644 - 1708)
Dutch Seaport, circa 1690
oil on canvas
Abraham Storck (alternatively Sturck or Sturckenburch) was born in mid-17th c. Amsterdam to a painter (Jan Jansz Sturck, 1603-73) and his wife (Teuntje) into what had become one of the most wealthy, intellectually tolerant and cosmopolitan centers of Europe and at the time of his country?s greatest moment, literally its ?Golden Age.? Amsterdam at the time was a world superpower, and the phenomenon of the dozens of successful merchants and their ship-centered culture, for all that it was, is sometimes called the ?Dutch Miracle.? Abraham and his two brothers trained early on as painters alongside their father in the family household workshop, and they were all documented members of the local artists? guild dedicated to Saint Luke: Sint-Lucasgilde.

Abraham loved promoting a romantic vision of Dutch seafaring ways, and as a young man he dreamed about the most exciting aspects of it: travelling with a group of adventurous men to foreign lands, consuming exotic spiced foods, interacting with people from around the globe, not having the responsibilities of home, and seeing the world?as the Dutch had created successful trading posts around the globe. Storck had a keen and practical eye as a draughtsman, and he applied his technological skill and his innate Flemish love of encyclopaedic detail to depicting all sorts of seafaring vessels: pleasure yachts, a great warship, rowing boats, fledglings (for whaling in the Arctic), fluyts, et al. He would then set these Dutch vessels, ones that he had so meticulously admired and examined, into seascapes of all sorts: various ports, naval scenes or battle scenes, topographical views, and in harbours that often featured invented ancient Mediterranean architecture and statuary (e.g. the Colossus of Rhodes), and large-scale erupting volcanoes (certainly inspired by Mount Vesuvius and life in the enormous port city of Naples) and various other foreign elements from places he probably never saw with his own eyes but had only learned about from speaking with seafarers in northerly ports and through the art that travelled with them.

This late 17th c. large square painting is about the exciting theatrical hustle and bustle of a variety of Dutch merchant shippers and various foreigners involved in the life of a successful harbor. Storck accurately depicts the details of the vessels as well as the men and the colored textures of their fashion that allows us to identify them: admirals, bystanders, land-based workers, entrepreneurs, foreign businessmen, rowers, sail handlers, young boys talking and watching, etc. And although this painting is clearly set in a ?European? port?it is not a real port but instead a fantastic inventive idealistic ?veduta? of a fantasy harbor scene that included everything Abraham loved about his own culture plus the amplification of it by adding the fantasy Italianate details: the tall townhouses look quite Florentine, the grey multi-storied building looks like it comes straight out of Vicenza along with its series of Palladian-like sculptures, a large ancient Roman ruin frames the left side of the painting, and a hilly landscape that recalls the landscape of many famous Italian ports (e.g. Amalfi or Positano) more than anything that ever existed in the flat-as-a-pancake landscape around Amsterdam. The idea of creating a scene of select fantastical elements (which later became known as a ?capriccio?) was something that hadn?t yet become popular?so Storck?s work here influenced the development of and the popularisation of 18th c. capriccio scenes. In sum, Storck?s capacity to mix a Dutch port with elements of Mediterranean theatre culture is extraordinary; and this canvas is one of Storck?s most engaging.

Storck's fascination with seafaring culture (and his own culture, more broadly) can be seen in the details. The enormous man-of-war three-tiered ship that he named ?D. TEMPEL SALOMONS? is an ode to the famous master shipbuilder of Rotterdam named Salomon Jansz van den Tempel (ca. 1590-1673), and Storck depicts the ship?s rigging, technical details and gilding with acute precision in honour of that master?s creations; but the ship is also an excuse to paint a variety of young agile Dutchmen at work: we see seven guys literally ?hanging out? on top of the large horizontal sail and another seven or so climbing their way up to their level from a series of vertical ropes. There are a few men smoking long Dutch white ceramic clay pipes (pijpaarde, popular in the Netherlands from the 1630s) filled with smoking tobacco recently imported from the New World; and in one of the pipes we see Storck's tiny orange dot representing its smoking ember. And we have ornately dressed businessmen wearing strikingly fashionable Dutch and foreign hats and ornate mantels (that could be studied by fashion historians for months) while talking about some or all of the following: the spice trade in eastern Indonesia (nutmeg, cloves, pepper and mace from Maluku or Batavia), Gouda cheese or local herring exportation, issues with cinnamon bark in Dutch Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the beauty of the Dutch trade depots of Aruba or Cura‡ao or Saint Maarten in the Caribbean, the standard of living in New Amsterdam, the general affairs of the Dutch East Indies or West Indies Companies, or perhaps the harsh realities of the hundreds of thousands of Africans sent from the ?Dutch Gold Coast" (Ghana and environs) in slave ships headed for Dutch Brazil to work sugarcane.

In sum, Storck loved to depict the many men associated with Dutch seafaring, and from his body of work, it seems that he led a busy life among these men for quite some time. Along gendered lines, it is noteworthy that of the dozens of people whom he selected for representation in this painting, not one is female?although some reputable (and perhaps many unrepeatable) women would have frequented 17th c. ports. Early on in his career, the Dutch women?s world did not capture Storck's attention. (At age 49 Abraham did eventually settle down, marrying an older widowed woman who brought her own children to their union.) It is also noteworthy that while Abraham loved depicting ports, harbors, sea travel and male seafarers?he happily did so at a distance, from the perspective of a man firmly grounded on the shore, of someone who chose to return home in the evening to a house filled with the creature comforts of his time. In the 1600s or in any era, life at sea would have been extraordinarily dangerous, men got seasick and in general could not receive proper medical care, un-fresh rationed food (and stored old water) was the only sustenance available, storms could blow ships off course either capsizing them or taking them to places from which they would never return home, and many must have been lonely away from their families and cities for months or even years at a time. So here Storck is heavily glamorising the Dutch seafaring lifestyle, doing so from the safety and security of his charming and luxurious Italianate fantasy harbor.

For more on the Dutch Golden Age and its shipping, see James Bender?s _Dutch Warships in the Age of Sail_ (2014), Simon Schama?s classic _The Embarrassment of Riches_ (1987) and Gary Schwartz?s _Rembrandt?s Universe_.

signed lower left, framed.
37 x 41 inches