Dutch Society of Marine Artists Dutch maritime art has a long tradition extending back to the 17th Century. The enormous growth in overseas trade and major victories of the Dutch naval fleet gave rise to a stream of commissions and led many artists to specialise in painting ships and seascapes. Realistic and detailed paintings of ships were in great demand from shipping companies and sea captains in the 19th Century. In the latter half of that century, painters such as Jongkind, Mesdag and Tholen developed impressionistic forms of maritime art. In all the styles and movements in modern art that subsequently developed in the 20th Century, the sea, coastlines, harbours and ships were major sources of inspiration. The Dutch Society for Marine Artists (NVZ) was founded after the Second World War in response to the participation of a group of Dutch visual artists in a maritime exhibition in Paris in 1948. A successful exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam led to the founding of the NVZ in 1953. A main objective of the society is to promote visual arts that relate to the sea and everything on and around it. There is great variety among the 30 members. There are meticulous technicians, familiar with every small structural detail of ships, and shaggy impressionists whose sweeping gestures and emotional expressions reflect their style of painting. Classical and modern movements can also be found among the three sculptors. Important exhibitions in the ‘eighties and ‘nineties included those at the Mystic Maritime Gallery (Connecticut USA), the Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, the Fisheries Museum in Scheveningen, the Lifeboat Museum in Den Helder, the Panorama Mesdag in The Hague, the Big Church in Monnickendam and the Naval Museum in Den Helder.