A beautiful Dutch whaling scene in watercolour. It shows five large Dutch ships, five smaller rowboats, four whales on the surface being harpooned by the sailors in the rowboats, and two bears in the foreground in the lower right corner. The bears are no doubt supposed to be polar bears, but the artist made them look more like brown bears. While the drawing is signed in black ink in the lower right corner, virtually nothing is known about the artist, except his or her name from the signature: "H. C. Tuyssen(?)".
The present scene was inspired by and/or adapted from a famous set of Dutch whaling prints (ca. 1720/25) by Sieuwert van der Meulen and Adolf van der Laen. The initial composition of the scene with the bears on the ice in the foreground reminds us of the print titled "Seylen in 't ys, en soeken na de walvis" (sailing through the ice, and searching for the whale), but it is not a direct copy. The artist seems to have combined parts of three or four prints from the set, to include more ships, rowboats, whales and the action of harpooning and capturing the whales, in the present scene. It is clear, that it represents a Dutch whaling scene, possibly in Davis Strait near Greenland or in the Arctic Ocean near Spilbergen (the Svalbard archipelago of Norway), since Dutch whalers were active in both regions.
With faded inscriptions in black ink in the lower corners of the illustration - left: "A. 1801[?]" - right: "H:C: Tuyssen [or Tuysson?]". Very slightly browned around the edges and with a few, barely visible, creases in the paper. Overall in very good condition. For the prints that inspired this watercolour: Dow 30, 42; Ingalls, Lothrop collection, 15[-17], 60, 144, 148.