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Biography of Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom (1566–1640)
Dutch marine painter. The founder of Dutch marine painting, Vroom introduced the marine subject to western European painting as an independent genre. Born in Haarlem he began his career as a pottery painter and in this capacity travelled to Spain and Italy. In Florence he was patronized around 1585–87 by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, later Grand Duke of Tuscany. It was probably at the Grand Duke's incentive that he took up easel painting. He was back in Haarlem in 1590, the year he married, before travelling to Danzig (now Gdansk). During his next journey, this time to Portugal, he survived shipwreck and possibly murder by being recognized as a Catholic from his salvaged religious paintings and he recorded the event in a series of pictures that he sold in Portugal. He returned to Haarlem as an artist of international repute and soon afterwards received two commissions for tapestry designs, one of which, from Lord Howard of Effingham, was for a series of ten tapestries depicting the defeat of the Spanish Armada of 1588, by the English under Howard’s overall command as Lord Admiral. Executed in Brussels in 1592–95, the tapestries later decorated the House of Lords, Westminster, and were fortunately recorded in engravings before they were destroyed with it, by fire in 1834. He also recorded important engagements of the Dutch and English fleets in his oil paintings, giving a detailed portrayal of ships. His large and decorative battles, ceremonial scenes and beach views introduced novel compositional devices to be taken up by younger Dutch marinists. The Haarlem painters Hans Goderis, Cornelis Verbeeck and Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen were all directly influenced by him.
View paintings by Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom
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