View of Hoorn

Abraham de Verwer

National Gallery of Art

Painted in tones of beige, cream white, and pecan brown with hints of shell pink and faint blue, a few sailboats float in a calm body of water with a harbor and a town deep in the distance along the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up this painting. Rippling gently across the foreground, the water reflects the pale blue sky and blush pink of clouds above. To our left, two masted ships with sails furled have pulled up alongside each other. A smaller boat sails to our right and a few more are spaced sparsely along the waterway leading to the town. Painted as a dense forest of spiky masts, the harbor in the far distance is full of boats along a town that stretches nearly the width of the panel. Tiny in scale, there are a few windmills and slate-gray towers for churches, town halls, and other buildings.