Maritime artist Jan de Quelery

Maarten

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Yesterday I fulfilled a long lasting wish. We visited maritime artist Jan de Quelery for buying an oil painting of a 17th century ship.
Jan is de Willem van de Velde of the 21st century. He is painting mainly 19th and 17th century ships in oil paint and aquarel.

He is famous for his 17th century sea battles which he paints at 2,5 mtr x 1,5 mtr. These go to museums etc.
He painted many of the Dutch Anglo sea battles but currently he is working on the battle at the Etna of the Dutch against the French.

We were privileged to join him to his workshop to see this work of art in progress which he just started. Below you see this work with Jan in front of it. On the left the Dutch fleet and on the right the French. First a drawing is made which is painted over with oil paint afterwards. A painting of this size takes Jan two years of work fulltime.
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Two of the finished works, still for sale.
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And a detail, these paintings are so detailed that they are painted with a magnifying glass in his hand. See a detail below.
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These masterpieces are unfortunately out of my budget so I went for a smaller work and made a selection out of these three works of art in oil paint.
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Finally I selected this one which is now being framed, if I picked it up from Jan I will post more detailed pictures.
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As Jan has so much beautiful works we also bought two aquarels. Like a kid in a candy store we had to choose again.
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These are the selected two aquarels for in our refurbished hall.
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Again beautifully detailed.
 
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Jan also published a book with all his drawings and paintings. I got the book as a gift from him and will post some pictures of it later this week
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To check it all yourselve see below his website.
 
Great selection - and I am jealous !!!! Great Art
Maybe I am able to afford the book - I am looking forward ....
 
Yesterday the framing of my painting was finished and I could pick it up from Jan.
Isn't she a beauty stil wrapped in protective film. This weekend she will hang on the wall above my Friesland model.
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Here a detail from the stern with all its delicate detailing, a beautifull piece of maritime art.
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WOW, WOW, and AGAIN WOW, FROM MY LATE WIFES SID A FAMILY OF ARTISTS A LOT IN MY PLACE, ONLY HER AUNT COULD COME CLOSE TO THIS BUT NEVER TO MATCH IT, THIS IS TRULY A MASTER ARTIST AT WORK JUST FANTASTIC. THANKS FOR SHARING> Don
 
This is really a great painting, but not only because of the beautiful ship of line, but in combination with the smaller vessels.
Great
 
Yesterday I visited Jan de Quelery again at his home is Vlissingen (Flushing) to select a painting for my 50th birthday as a gift from my wife.
Yes I am becoming an old men this year. :)

We had a nice discussion about ship design as I as a modelbuilder have sometimes different views as he as a painter. His sources are ofcourse Van de Velde but also other painters like abraham storck. Next to that he works with drawings of Otte Blom and GC Dik. In general a painter looks at light, time of day, wind direction and composition etc. Whereas I look at construction details, wales, knees, boltheads proportions etc.

First I had the idea to get a Van de Velde like sketched water colour but during the Covid period Jan made a series of 4 beautiful larger 100 x 120 cm oil paintings.

First the ship Gouda at open sea.
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Second is de Gouden Leeuw at Dishoek. A ship which is well know from the Van de Velde view at the port of Amsterdam.
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Third harbour view of Amsterdam.
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And the last one he is still working on, a different view at Amsterdam and which will be finished towards the end of this year.
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Difficult choices but I went for the view at Amsterdam with it beautifull very detailed view with al its buildings. You can only see the details when you see it in reality. He told for instance about the creation of the water in this painting was different as this is shallow muddy water of the IJ lake in amsterdam which is different to open sea and the artistic freedom to give the closed gun ports a reddish look.
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Jan will finish the last Amsterdam view and then will start witha different genre of work instead of the 17th century works.
He still has larger and also smaller work available all very detailed.

He also finished his series of 10 very large sea battles with the raid on the Medway and the battle at the Etna where Michiel de Ruyter, who was actually also from Vlissingen, was deadly wounded.
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I still have to wait for the painting for 4-5 weeks as it needs to be framed. But when I have it I will post some more pictures about details.
 
I could have considered that, as the painting didn't fit into the car. :), so we had to pick it up with our RV and made a nice weekend trip of it.

But no worry my old diesel is still on the road :).
 
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