A River Scene with a Dutch Yacht firing a Salute

This 1665 canvas, one of the National Gallery's three Van de Cappelle holdings, depicts a Dutch yacht firing a salute on a river — a ceremonial subject he returned to throughout his career. By 1665 Van de Cappelle was in his late forties and painting with the relaxed authority of a fully resolved mature style. The yacht's salute — cannon fire producing a dense cloud of grey-white smoke — was among the compositional challenges he found most amenable to his atmospheric method: smoke behaves like cloud, dispersing and lightening as it rises, offering the same opportunities for tonal nuance as the weather formations he studied so carefully. The National Gallery's acquisition of three Van de Cappelle canvases reflects the sustained high regard in which his work was held from the seventeenth century onward.

Smoke from the saluting cannon is the compositional drama, rising in an asymmetric mass that balances the vessel's mast on the opposite side of the composition. Van de Cappelle integrates the smoke into the sky by keying it to similar tonal values, then distinguishing it through slightly warmer color and more turbulent internal modeling.