This was clearly a successful composition by Willem van de Velde, the Younger, since Robinson records eight versions (op. cit., pp. 332-335, nos. 230 1-8). The version he lists first, though not necessarily the prime picture, he dates to circa 1658, before the van de Veldes moved to England. That painting was believed to have been in the Okeover family from the mid-18th century until its sale at Christie’s in 1936. It was recorded by Waagen and Hofstede de Groot, and was widely exhibited in Derbyshire, London and Paris. Robinson considered the present painting ‘one of the better versions’, very close to the Okeover picture, and suggested that it may have been executed by the same assistant in the van de Velde studio who painted the rather similar picture of a Yacht becalmed in the Liechtenstein collection, Schloss Vaduz (ibid., no. 177). A finished drawing of the composition, which several of the versions may have relied upon, is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.