Zandvoorts Museum has finally received it, the painting of one of the most evocative shipwrecks off the coast of the seaside resort: the sinking of the English three-master P. Nicolas on January 1, 1880. The Zandvoort art historian Anne Marion Cense tapped the canvas of the Amsterdam artist Pieter Cornelis Dommersen (1834-1918) at a gallery on the head for seven thousand euros.
The painting was unveiled this afternoon and alderman Gert-Jan Bluijs was delighted with it, especially because it tells ‘the history of Zandvoort’. Bluijs: “Every Zandvoort knows the story of this ship. When the weather is clear and the water is very low, parts of the wreck are even visible at post 70 (beach bar Tijn Akersloot, ed.).
Shipwreck
Anne Marion Cense was not specifically looking for this work of art. She was, however, very concerned about bringing a painting of a shipwreck to the museum because it was still missing from the collection. And that while in the nineteenth century numerous ships were wrecked off the coast of Zandvoort.
Conflagration
According to tradition, the wind blew mercilessly on that first January day of 1880. The ship sailing under the English flag, carrying seven thousand barrels of petroleum on its way from New York to Rotterdam, could not withstand that. A day after it ran aground, the ship, popularly known as ‘the Oiler’, caught fire. There was literally a conflagration. The men of the Koninklijke Noord- en Zuid-Hollandse Rescue Maatschappij rushed out and succeeded in rescuing all seventeen castaways, including the captain, his wife and their child.
Romanticized
“If you look at the sky and the ship, it’s almost a heavenly scene,” says Bluijs. “And also a little romanticized.” Anne Marion Cense nods. “After all, that’s what Dommersen was known for,” says the art historian.
The unveiling of the canvas is a harbinger of later exhibitions in the Zandvoorts Museum: the Sea Painters exhibition (from September 8) and an exhibition on the occasion of two hundred years of the KNRM (September 2024).