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Merchant Ships
Reinier Nooms, called Zeeman (Dutch, c. 1623-c. 1664)
1643/68
- Medium
- Etching in black on ivory laid paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image: 11.6 × 12.3 cm (4 5/8 × 4 7/8 in.); Plate: 12.2 × 20.7 cm (4 13/16 × 8 3/16 in.); Sheet: 14.8 × 23.2 cm (5 7/8 × 9 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- The Wallace L. DeWolf and Joseph Brooks Fair Collections
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Reinier Nooms was a painter and etcher who harbored a great love of the sea. He spent many years as a sailor on Dutch merchant vessels traveling between his native Amsterdam and ports in France, Italy, and North Africa. As a reflection of his nautical background, he frequently signed his name as “Zeeman,” or, “Seaman.” This signature appears among the clouds at the top of the etching seen here, one of 170 he produced. Nooms’s realistic detail comes directly from his seafaring experience, whether in his depiction of ships, ports, or naval battles. His etchings of ships and views of Paris would inspire later artists such as the 19th-century French etcher Charles Meryon.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
