A drawing from the Macomber collection was sold 22-25 May 1946 ($1550)

Willem Van de Velde's training and early activity in Leiden and Amsterdam is not well documented, but he spent his entire working life drawing ships and small craft. His drawings provided him with the raw material for his grisailles ( penschilderingen or 'pen paintings' drawn in ink on a prepared white canvas or oak panel). He was constantly at sea with the Dutch fleet, sometimes as an independent observer, sometimes in an official capacity. He was present at the Battle of Scheveningen in 1653 and made drawings from the deck of his galliot (a small Dutch sailing vessel). He witnessed the Battle of the Sound in 1658, which is recorded in a grisaille (London, N. Mar. Mus.), and the defeat of the Dutch fleet at the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665. In 1666 he made a sequence of drawings recording every stage of the epic Four Days' Battle off Dunkirk, with the approval and protection of Admiral de Ruyter. For the next six years he was at home in Amsterdam working on his grisailles. On the outbreak of the Third Anglo-Dutch War in 1672 he rejoined the Dutch fleet and made on-the-spot drawings of the Battle of Sole Bay.