Beach View

In 1731 this panel and its companion, both painted by Abraham Storck in 1683, belonged to Prince William IV in Leeuwarden, the Frisian capital, where the young prince governed Friesland and a few neighbouring provinces as stadholder. They passed to his son William V, who in 1774 opened a picture gallery beside his quarters in The Hague, the first museum in the Netherlands open to the public.

In 1795 French troops confiscated the prince's pictures and took them to Paris, to the museum in the Louvre. They came back in 1815, and from 1816 the new royal picture gallery was shown in William V's old gallery, until the collection moved to the Mauritshuis in 1822. So this beach view, signed at the lower left, hangs again today in the Gallery Prince Willem V, now as property of the Mauritshuis.