_Bakhuizen_ (Dutch: 1631-1708).
Ludolf Bakhuizen comes second in the succession of Dutch
sea painters to W. van de Velde, and the reader is referred
to the remarks on that painter (see under 149) for the
general characteristics of them both. Whereas, however, Van
de Velde preferred calms, Bakhuizen preferred storms, and
even "voluntarily exposed his life several times," says a
compatriot, "for the sake of seizing, in all its horrible
reality, the effects of rough weather" (Havard: _The Dutch
School_, p. 255). It cannot be said, however, that the result
was very successful. There is, adds the same critic, a hardness
about his forms and a want of transparency in his colours
"which cannot be counterbalanced by the fury of upheaved
waves or the furious driving of the heavy clouds across the
sky." Bakhuizen, before he took to painting, was successively
a book-keeper (his father was town-clerk of Emden) and a
writing-master. Perhaps it is to his experience in the latter
capacity that the hardness and "peruke-like" regularity of
his waves are due. In his own day, however, his sea-pieces
were very greatly esteemed. The King of Prussia was among his
patrons, and the Tzar, Peter the Great, frequently visited his
studios, and even himself took lessons of him. He made many
constructive drawings of ships for that monarch. He was also
an etcher, and the British Museum possesses a fragment of a
sketch-book of his.