Object Description
Large Victorian coastal marine painting by Edward William Cooke, R.A.
English, 1842
Frame: height 92cm, width 128cm, depth 6.5cm
Canvas: height 77cm, width 122cm
This superb marine landscape painting is by the leading Victorian artist Edward William Cookie, R.A., F.R.S. It is titled ‘Dutch fisherman warping their craft out of Broeckenhaven Harbour, Holland,’ and depicts a coastal scene of Dutch fisherman battling the waves of the unsettled sea surrounding their boat. Cooke’s painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1842, the year in which it was executed.
The painting is signed, and dated ‘E.W. Cooke, 1842’ to the lower right, and titled to the reverse. It is housed in a large giltwood frame. It bears a retailers provenance label for Owen Edgar Gallery, London. Cooke was a leading proponent of the Romantic British marine painting genre, studying the work of Dutch Old Masters, who painted stormy seascapes which inspired much of the British tradition. With works such as this and ‘A North Sea Breeze off the Dutch coast’, 1855, held in the National Maritime Museum, London, he sought to emulate their earlier mastery, and did so with great success.