Marine, eine Barke segelt dem Ufer zu 

Ludolf Backhuysen’s ‘Marine, eine Barke segelt dem Ufer zu’ is a drawing made with pen, ink, and wash. It depicts a busy harbor scene. The artist’s choice of media – humble paper and ink, rather than oil paint – is significant. Backhuysen specialized in marine painting, a genre closely linked to the booming maritime trade of the 17th century. His finished paintings would have been prestige objects, bought by wealthy merchants to celebrate their success. But this drawing offers a glimpse into the labor behind the glory. The quickly sketched lines and tonal washes suggest a working study, perhaps made on site. We can imagine Backhuysen capturing the scene firsthand, ready to translate it later into a more polished and expensive artwork. The drawing, therefore, becomes a kind of raw material, evidence of the artist’s own labor within the larger economic engine of the Dutch Golden Age. It reminds us that even the most seemingly effortless artistic creations are rooted in tangible processes and social realities.