The Wadden Sea has the largest tidal flat in the world. There are five hundred kilometers that run along the coasts of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. During twilight, the sun spreads entirely over the bay as if it were dying. Ludolf Backhuysen He lived in Emden, a city that at that time belonged to the Kingdom of Hanover. As a boy I walked barefoot along that enormous beach dreaming of crossing it, leaving behind the calm cove and experiencing the storm out to sea.
We know little about Backhuysen. We know, yes, that he was born in Emden on December 28, 1630 and that the first job he had was as an aspiring accountant. His teachers discovered elegant handwriting and a knack for arithmetic, so he ended up in Amsterdam counting money to an opulent merchant named Guillemo Bartollotti. But something happened on that road to success and it went wrong in the worst way: he wanted to be an artist. What words would he have used to convince his family?
There are two biographies. One is from Arnold Houbrakenfrom 1753. The other, from Gerlinde de Beer2002. The latter draws on the former and a series of family documents that a descendant bequeathed to the Rijksprentenkabinett, the National Printing Office, in 1905. It is a book that, despite its great contribution, ensures Lawrence O. Goeddehas a “tendency toward exaggeration or inaccuracy in details.” Could one thing be a product of the other, that is to say: fascination emerges from little information?
We are facing a truncated history, full of gaps. A painter with a vast body of work that thoroughly explores the genre of marine painting and includes six very ambitious self-portraits. In them there is a conscious autobiographical component. As if he knew that time would erase the data, that the future would not be able to observe his figurative works, so it was necessary to leave standing a finished representation, a painting of the self. In these six works he is always seen as arrogant and haughty.
There was a time when you would take something from this world and simply not know what it was. Seen from this part of time, that ignorance looks beautiful. Nostalgia? No, no, it’s something else. One would enter a used bookstore, spend hours browsing between shelves, inhaling all kinds of mites, find a book and if the name of its author was completely unknown, that was the end of the story. He didn’t have a robotic assistant peeking in his pocket to ask.
In the ancient pre-internet era, the world was still suspected of being unfathomable. Not knowing most of it was the obvious thing. I remember telling a friend about a book I had gotten on Corrientes Street, a short collection of poems with metaphors of wild animals and desperate erotic longings. No one had ever heard the name of that poet. On the lapel, his photo: he had dreadlocks. My friend suggested I look for his name in the registry of delinquent debtors. I gave up. Better literary traps than fiscal ones.
Ludolf Backhuysen It always started as a sketch. He would sit on the coast and, with pencil and paper, sketch the horizon, the dividing line: the sun, the clouds, the birds, above; the sea, the people, the boats, below. Then he sharpened his vision and focused his attention on the waves. How do you draw a wave? How is what only exists in movement frozen with the line? A panoramic view was no longer enough, we had to cross the beach, leave behind the calm cove and experience the storm out to sea.
He would get into a boat and row and row until he was in an area far enough away to feel adrift and close enough to be able to return alive. The waves weren’t the only thing that interested him. Also the intensity in the heights, the storms, and that electric romance between the sky and the water. You have to imagine Ludolf clinging with both hands to the out-of-control boat, soaked by the rain, observing—and memorizing—every detail of that chaotic and perfect scene, of that great enigma.
The dead still speak to us. Some even scream. Those who died in recent years have left a trail of information. As in Morel’s invention of Bioy Casareson social media profiles each dead person is still alive, reproducing their holographic presence in a loop. They are the rooms of the digital museum, where each dead person exhibited their autobiographical work forever. Everyone talks; some even scream. The anonymous people of the ancient pre-internet era assimilated silence.
There is not much more information than what follows: that he studied with Allart van Everdingen and with Hendrick Jacobsz Dubbelswhich received a visit from Cosimo II de’ Medici and Peter the Greatwho opened a gallery in the Amsterdam town hall and who died after returning from a trip to England, getting off the ship, a few hours or a few days later. That was on November 17, 1708, in Amsterdam. There isn’t much more information left than that. The rest is in what he himself left, his work. You have to read his life in it.
The man about whom we know a lot about his work but little about his life gets off the boat. His health did not support the trip as he imagined. Cough? Vomit? Do you have a fever? He is 77 years old. In the Holy Roman Empire and at that time, it was a lot. Lying in bed, with a cold handkerchief on his forehead, he slowly fades away. He still savors the memory of the last trip: the big waves, the intense storms, the tempest. Perhaps, in the end, in the last breath, he revealed the enigma of the electric romance between the sky and the sea.
