Dutch artist captures unique beauty of harbors

By Jane Freebury

JAKARTA (JP): As a boy, Dutch maritime artist Peter J. Sterkenburg enjoyed watching ships pass through the old port of Harlingen where he lived in northern Holland. His enjoyment manifested itself in a talent for drawing ships. This preoccupation has become a life's work and brought about exhibitions such as Sterkenburg's latest to Asia-Pacific, Harbours of Asia and Australia, Now and in the Past. It is open to the public at Erasmus Huis in Jl. H.R. Rasuna Said, Kuningan, South Jakarta until July 2.

Shipping of every class is represented on Sterkenburg's canvasses, some in port and some at sea. There are views of tea clippers, sampans, junks, windjammers, sloops, hovercraft, yachts, tugs, container ships and fishing boats in this maritime equivalent to train spotting. From tall ships of easy grace to chugging fishing vessels that hug shorelines, Sterkenburg paints them all.

Sterkenburg's exhibition is an eclectic collection, with, say, a fishing boat from Aberdeen, a hydrofoil from Macao Ferry Services and a Chinese junk captured together within a single frame.

Sometimes Sterkenburg offers a simple celebratory statement such as the "tea race" with clipper "Cutty Sark" in the lead on its way with a cargo of fresh new tea leaves, on their way to the tea cups of Europe via the markets of Canton, China. An image of stately tea clippers that could hail from colonial days.

Other times, Sterkenburg offers a different world view. In Penang Bridge, 1995 there is a squat-hulled and rusty coastal vessel the "Hock Huat" in the foreground, reflecting a rusty stain on the waters below to emphasize the point. Typical local fishing boats are mid-ground, while the delicate lines of Penang Bridge are only discernible deep in the background. A totally different statement than the proud lines of the "Cutty Sark".

Sterkenburg's naturalistic aesthetic style is classical in its attention to mimesis. These paintings are reproductions to rival the photograph, with barely a smidgen of careless impressionism in sight -- except perhaps a ghostly Hong Kong city backdrop to Hong Kong Harbour with Kai Tak Runway, 1995.

The twenty paintings exhibited range from researched reconstructions such as Penang, Georgetown 1850, with an old fort in the background, that recreate a harbour scene long gone, to the immediacy of paintings completed just last year, like Chinese Junks, Pearl River Delta, Sunset, 1995 or Penang Bridge 1995, and Hong Kong Harbour with Kai Tak Runway, 1995. All these starkly descriptive titles have the ring of anatomical detail and so it is with the paintings. Prudent and no nonsense captions for the honest realistic representations they describe.

Pilot Boat 'Captain Cook II', North and South Head, Sydney 1925, is a dynamic painting that prompts an image of Sterkenburg aboard a Manly ferry, passing the Sydney Harbor mouth. The artist probably had to narrow his eyes just a little to imagine the old pilot boat Captain Cook II churning through heaving seas to meet the Captain Erikson windjammer and guide it into port. For those who know Sydney Harbour, the Macquarie Lighthouse can be discerned, a tiny white finger with a little cluster of housing around it. The painting has a sense of urgency -- the need to make a connection -- that draws the viewer. A narrative suggests itself.

Sky

Sterkenburg known for his ships, but his treatment of sky and sea is a critical element. Without the artist's ability to render the sea and sky dynamically there would be no more than the fixed and painted ship upon the painted ocean.

Although Sterkenburg is good with light, in the sky and on the waves of an ordinary day, he is heavy on sunsets. There are a large number of romantically streaked skies in exhibition.

In Chinese Junks, Pearl River Delta, Sunset, 1995 a setting sun is about to drop out of the sky. There is sunlight on cloud and water -- tinges of pink, mushroom gray and mauve -- coded romantically to invoke a bygone era. Ditto Hong Kong, Sunset, 1860 which details American and British merchant ships amongst junks and sampans set against a city of the past.

According to the exhibition catalog, Sterkenburg joined the army as a young man. His talent was discovered and he was commissioned to paint both military and maritime subjects. While ships under sail seem to be Sterkenburg's favorite subjects, he has also painted oil-drilling platforms in the North Sea, naval vessels, container ships and even fighter jets. His first collective exhibition was held in 1980 in Breukelen, Holland.

Sterkenburg's first Asian exhibition was successfully staged in 1992 in Hong Kong. It is easy to see why, with paintings like Hong Kong, 1860, Victoria Harbour brought to life with photographic veracity.

A painting, even a view of actual contemporary scenes, can be worth a thousand photographs. Comparing one of the artist's least successful exhibited paintings with one of his more successful, Sydney Harbour with Singapore Harbour, the contrast between them makes the point. There is a flattened-out perspective in Singapore Skyline, 1995, and a single line of movement, left to right, a standard two-thirds down the frame.

The naturalistic Sydney Harbour, 1995 has a very different quality. The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House are merely icons in the distance, background wallpaper to the choppy seas and the blustery winds in the sails moving at a fast clip in the foreground. The viewer could be in the prow of a boat just about to move into the picture. It is a painting with a perspective that suggests that the artist, and this viewer, is in dynamic relation to the subject. It is among the exhibits that represent this maritime painter at his best.