Hendrik van Minderhout, a painter of seascapes, came from Rotterdam. By the age of twenty, he had already established himself in Bruges where he lived twenty years before moving to Antwerp in 1672. His seascapes and harbour views show vast, cloud-filled skies with galleons riding above the horizon, their sails billowing and their flags fluttering in the breeze. Van Minderhout used his props in these models of baroque luxuriousness to create a sense of exoticism and drama. //