Abraham Storck

Abraham Storck spent his life within sight of the water. Baptised in Amsterdam in 1644, he trained in his father's painting workshop alongside two brothers who also became painters, and he stayed near the harbour to the end, living on Kattenburg, one of the man-made islands built for the shipyards.

He painted the busiest port in 17th-century Europe, and what drew him was the ceremony of it: pleasure yachts dressed for a regatta, fleets gathered to welcome a visitor, crowds watching from the quay. He rendered masts, rigging and hulls with real accuracy, in the manner of the Van de Veldes, the leading marine painters of the day, so the ships read as particular vessels rather than props.

He also invented sunlit Mediterranean harbours he had probably never seen, and painted views up the Rhine. Storck married late, at 49, and was buried in Amsterdam in 1708.