Object data
wood, brass, iron, glass, rope, textile and paint
height 410 cm × length 452 cm × width 205 cm
Adriaen de Vriend, Adriaen Davidsen, Cornelis Moerman
Model of a 74-Gun Ship of the Line
Flushing, Flushing, Flushing, Middelburg, Middelburg, Middelburg, Middelburg, 1698
Inscriptions
- monogram, on the taffrail: RWR (4x)
- inscription, on the stern: 1698
Conservation
- H. Ketting, 1969: restored
- Davina Jakobi, June 2015: textile conservation of sails and ensign
Provenance
...; Admiraliteit van Zeeland (Admiralty of Zeeland), Middelburg, 1698;1 transferred to 's Lands Werf (Navy dockyard) Amsterdam, 18 April 1798;2 transferred to the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden (Royal Cabinet of Curiosities), The Hague, 1825;3 transferred to the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, 1858;4 transferred to the museum, 1883
Object number: NG-MC-651
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
Polychromed and rigged wooden frame model of a three-masted ship with sails, mounted on a stand.
Seventy-four guns are situated on three decks. The low beakhead has a figurehead of a rampant lion with an English crown and is flanked by putti. The forecastle bulkhead, railing and catheads are ornamented with carvings that have been painted yellow. The stern has a square tuck and a hollow counter. The taffrail has two storeys and is ornamented with yellow-painted carvings of foliage, putti and an allegorical figure. It bears the coat of arms of Zeeland, the year 1698 and an encircled Saint George’s cross (the Order of the Garter) in a star with four monograms ‘RWR’. The quarter galleries, decorated with carvings of foliage and putti, have one storey with three pointed roofs and have a bay window for a lantern. Below the stern a straight, square-headed rudder with an ornamented head is indicated, which does not enter the hull, as well as a whipstaff on the quarterdeck. The model has three anchors, three capstans, four pumps and a binnacle. The sheer rises towards the stern. The model has two double wales and two sheer rails. The hull is round. The ship has a seventeenth-century three-masted rig with all its sails, a spritsail topmast on the bowsprit, round tops and round mast caps and a lateen yard.
The hull of the model was built in Flushing in the winter of 1697 and 1998 and transported to the assembly rooms of the Admiralty of Zeeland in the former abbey of Middelburg, where it was rigged under supervision of Lieutenant Admiral Cornelis Evertsen (1642-1702).
Jochem Pietersz Asmus (1755-1837) found the model in a poor condition in 1796 and was just in time to prevent its sale. He had it restored and then shipped to Amsterdam in 1798.5 In 1825 the ship model was transferred to the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden in The Hague, where it was exhibited as a show model adorned with a great number of flags.6 Due to lack of space it was returned to the Navy Model Room in 1858.7
From the nineteenth century onwards, the model is called William Rex, referring to the four monograms on the stern because as far as can be established it cannot be conclusively identified with an existing ship of the line. One possibility, however, is that it loosely represents the 94-gun Koning William of the Admiralty of Zeeland. Although it shares many similarities, it does lack twenty guns to match Koning William’s armament.8
Scale (estimate) 1:12 or 1:13.
Literature
J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, no. 651; Correspondentie tussen Jhr. (B.W.F.) van Riemsdijk, toenmalig directeur van het Nederlandsch Museum en den admiraal (E.) Pâris, toenmalig directeur van het Musée de la Marine te Parijs, s.l. 1889-90, manuscript in HSM, inv. no. NII (02675); A. Vreugdenhil, Men-of-War of the United Netherlands 1648-1702, London 1938, p. 45; L.G. Carr Laughton, Old Ship Figure-Heads and Sterns, London/New York 1925, p. 174, fig. b; R. van Luttervelt, Oude schepen / Old Ships, Amsterdam 1957, nos. 19-21; E. Pâris, Souvenirs de Marine, facsimile, 3 vols., Grenoble 1975-76, vol. 3, pls. 264-265; A.A. Lemmers, ‘Een vorstelijk “pronkscheepje”’, in H. Stevens (ed.), The Art of Technology: The Navy Model Collection in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam/Wormer 1995, pp. 8-11; A.A. Lemmers, Techniek op schaal. Modellen en het technologiebeleid van de Marine 1725-1885, Amsterdam 1996, p. 90; V. László and R. Woodman, The Story of Sail, Annapolis, MD 1999, p. 82; A.J. Hoving, William Rex: A Model of a 17th-Century Warship, Zwolle/Amsterdam 2005; E. Vos and A. Klein, Batavia. De inrichting van een Oostindiëvaarder, Lelystad 2011, p. 60; A.J. Hoving, Message in a Model: Stories from the Navy Model Room of the Rijksmuseum, Florence, OR 2013, pp. 54-57; F. Hin, ‘Een ode aan oude scheepstuigers’, Scheepshistorie 16 (2013), pp. 124-28; K. Klasens et al., ‘Het model van de William Rex nagerekend’, Scheepshistorie 16 (2013), pp. 120-23; A. Peters, Ship Decoration 1630-1780, Barnsley 2013, pp. 73-76; G. van der Ham, De geschiedenis van Nederland in 100 voorwerpen, Amsterdam 2013, pp. 254-57; J.P. Sigmond and W.T. Kloek, Sea Battles in the Dutch Golden Age, Zwolle 2014, pp. 68-70
Citation
J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Adriaen de Vriend and Adriaen Davidsen and Cornelis Moerman, Model of a 74-Gun Ship of the Line, 1698', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.244466
(accessed 24 May 2024 15:00:37).