Dutch school; end of the 17th century.

Dutch school; end of the XVII century.
"Marina".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Presents restorations.
Measurements: 37 x 50 cm; 43 x 57 cm (frame).
The artist of the present canvas is mainly interested in the atmospheric capture, seeking to convey the feeling of calm and tranquility of the gentle waves, of a changing green. The artist reveals himself as a good draughtsman, creating a classic and effective composition. We see in this canvas a seascape with a costumbrist approach and expressive language, with a tight and precise brushstroke. It combines two of the most appreciated themes at the time, genre painting and landscape. The composition, on the other hand, is dynamic, although perfectly balanced, with accentuated diagonal lines in the foreground that contrast with the horizontal lines that determine the background, characterized by a low horizon that leaves ample space for the development of the sky.
Of all the contributions made by northern European countries to the history of art, none has achieved the enduring importance and popularity of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting. Evoking the outlines, terrains and atmospheres of the Netherlands more vividly than any other place, large or small, has ever been depicted. Within this tradition, the most revolutionary and enduring Dutch landscape contribution has surely been its naturalism. Seventeenth-century Dutch painters were the first to create a perceptually real and seemingly comprehensive image of their land and people. Although landscape as an independent genre appeared in Flanders in the 16th century, there is no doubt that this type of painting only reached its full development among Dutch artists. It can be said that it was practically they who invented the naturalistic landscape, which they affirmed as an exclusively central feature of their artistic heritage. There is no doubt that the Dutch painter, filled with pride for his land, knew how to show through his paintings the beauty of its vast plains and overcast skies, the regular layout of its canals and meandering rivers, its polders and dikes, its beaches and, of course, its spectacular stormy seas. Despite their naturalism or the inventorial record of fact, Dutch landscapes were at least as much a product of imagination as of observation. The Dutch vision of reality, almost as literal as photography, does not so much trace the os or examine the topography of its surroundings as it naturally selects and reshapes nature to present it in an exemplary way.