The Return of the Dutch East India Company Fleet

Once a year the Dutch East India Company's return fleet sailed home from Batavia, on Java, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, its holds full of pepper, spices and cloth from Asia, and Amsterdam waited on its arrival. The Louvre thinks this canvas, nearly three metres wide, may show the fleet that came back in 1676 and 1677. The ship in the left foreground carries its name on the stern, the Hollandse Tuin, the Dutch Garden, a vessel of the Company's Amsterdam chamber. In the centre sails the flagship of the fleet's commander, Gijsbert David Strandwijk, and the low land on the right is probably the island of Texel, which ships passed on their way in towards the city.

Bakhuizen put his initials on a sail of the largest ship. The date, low on the left, is hard to read. 1677 is the usual reading, though some have read 1675. The picture may have stayed with the commander's own family for a while, since an Amsterdam inventory of 1717 drawn up for his widow, Margaretha Hobbe, seems to list it. In 1785 the Paris dealer Alexandre-Joseph Paillet bought it in Holland for Louis XVI, and in 1793, after the monarchy had fallen, it was on the walls when the Louvre first opened as a public museum.