nautical paintings and watercolours

Lumbering inland navigation vessels cherish the late afternoon sun and an unmistakable Urk cutter beats up against a stiff sea.

They originate from the palette of Urk maritime painter Teun Bakker, and from his heart, because ships are his great passion.

T.B.

I have always had affinity with ships. It runs in the family. My father, master of a river vessel, used to build shipmodels in his spare time, just like my uncles, with great accuracy down to the last pulley.

I myself started young. At seventeen I qualified as a steersman and after that I sailed on cutters for twenty years.

TB modestly but clearly sketches his development up till who he is today; a maritime painter, widely appreciated, with a studio and a really fabulous gallery that offers a variety of maritime pictures, ranging from medieval till contemporary war vessels, tea clippers, luggers, seiners and cutters in different sea and weather conditions.
Teun paints many business gifts in commission. Also, skippers who simply want a painting of their ship call upon him.

I always start painting the sky. Then, interacting with the water and the ship, the overall picture emerges.

The atmosphere, those waves that ...... I don't quite know how to say this, but a sailor saying to me "look I recognise that, that works", that's what counts for me.

It all started for Bakker at the age of twelve with a calendar of the company Lankhorst from the Dutch town Sneek.

As a boy I had been drawing a lot, but that calendar was the real thing.

It included pictures of threemasters, ships with hundreds of square meters of sail, pure wind machines.

Then there was only one thing left to do; to paint like that. It is still my favourite subject; never after something so marvellous in the area of shipbuilding has been made. That technique, those fantastic hulls. Try and stand on one of those yard-arms and imagine how that must have felt at windforce nine, when they used to continue sailing.

V.S.
With great passion for the professio Bakker continued to develop his talent. It got more serious when, at seventeen, after just three months as a steersman, Bakker was forced to say ashore for one and a half year due to a grave accident.

T.B.
I got my hands on a book then about all the things I had previously, through trial and error, taught myself. To the question whether any paintings of that starting period have been kept, Bakker replies laughing "all sold, unbelievable, but already then people were interested. It is alive and it has movement, they used to say.

V.S.
Bakker enjoys both national and international fame. His water-colour score extra high from an artistic point of view. Not in the least because of the almost lifelike reproduction of seas and ships at full sea.

Interview with maritime painter Teun Bakker

T.B.