Jan van de Cappelle

Jan van de Cappelle never had to sell a painting to eat. He ran a large dye works in Amsterdam that his father had built, producing the costly red dye carmine, and the money let him paint entirely as he pleased. He seems to have taught himself, learning from the marine painter Simon de Vlieger, and he became the finest painter of calm water in the whole Dutch Golden Age.

His speciality was the quiet harbour at rest, still water like glass, sails hanging slack, a few small craft and a wide, luminous sky doing most of the work. It sounds like nothing happening, and that stillness is exactly the point.

His wealth also made him a great collector. He owned hundreds of drawings and paintings, including works by Rembrandt and by van Goyen, a master of the plain Dutch landscape. Because business took so much of his time, fewer than 150 of his own paintings survive, a small output for so long a career.