Jan Frederik Schutz - Boats By The Sea

Jan Frederik SCHUTZ Middelburg (Netherlands), 1817 – 1888 Oil on panel 26 x 43 cm (33 x 51 cm with the frame) Signed and dated lower right "JF Schütz / 56" Two old labels on the back (number 15 and 137) Like Barent Koekoek, Jan Frederik Schütz was originally from Middelburg, capital of the province of Zeeland on the island of Walcheren in the Netherlands. He was born in 1817 into a family of sailors and was destined for a career as a sailor, but his mother died when he was only sixteen and he had to work in the smoked salmon trade. But his talents as a draftsman allowed him to enter the famous Middelburg Drawing Academy in 1839, at the age of twenty-two. And in 1843, he exhibited his first painting at the Levende Master exhibition in The Hague. Jan Frederik Schütz was a romantic seaside painter who knew the middle of the sea and the boats of the island of Walcheren in the Netherlands. His art shows a fine balance between The Hague realism and Scheldt luminism with remarkable attention to detail. Schütz did many nature studies. He worked mainly on Walcheren and had a preference for boats by the sea. He went on an expedition. For example, we know that around 1845, he sailed for two weeks on a fishing boat in the North Sea. He probably witnessed a shipwreck during this trip. He made sketches of boats on the rough North Sea, especially near the British coast (for example for his Ship in Distress, 1855). He also did a lot of outdoor sketching on the edge of the chalk cliffs.