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Dune Scene with Peasant Figures
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Starting life as a sailor, Willem van de Velde was soon appointed to make drawings and paintings of ships in the Dutch navy, and, in 1672, he was appointed by the English king to record English vessels and naval campaigns. In this drawing, made across two oblong sheets of a sketchbook, Van de Velde turned his eye to the beach, using chalk to capture the flat beach, grassy dunes, and small village and church steeple on the coast of Holland. He added the groupings of figures and horse-drawn carts in the foreground later with pen and ink.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineDune Scene with Peasant Figures, mid-1650s. Willem van de Velde (Dutch, c. 1611–1693). Pen and brown ink over graphite on antique laid paper; lined with tissue paper; support: 28.9 x 58.7 cm (11 3/8 x 23 1/8 in.); matted: 36.2 x 60.5 x 0.5 cm (14 1/4 x 23 13/16 x 3/16 in.); image: 17.5 x 49.5 cm (6 7/8 x 19 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 2019.15
