Vessels in a Fresh Breeze

In the Dutch Republic of the 1660s a great deal of ordinary travel happened on the water. People and goods crossed the inland seas and broad rivers in small, sturdy boats, and the one at the centre here is probably a kaag, an inshore ferry, running before a fresh breeze with a couple of passengers bundled up against the cold. Ruisdael painted it around 1660 to 1665, on a canvas about half a metre wide. The sky is big and stormy, yet the sails are honey-coloured rather than white, and the National Gallery reads that warmth as the sign of a routine crossing, the kind people made every week. Near the front, waves break against a row of wooden piles. Out towards the horizon a patch of blue sky opens, and the white sails of other boats catch the light there. The picture came to the gallery in 1910, in the bequest of the collector George Salting.