Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633-1707) was the leading Dutch marine painter of the later seventeenth century and, with his father Willem van de Velde the Elder, one of the founders of the marine painting tradition that would shape British seascape art well into the eighteenth century. Baptised in Leiden in December 1633, the son of a marine draughtsman and the brother of the landscape painter Adriaen van de Velde, he trained under his father and, for a period, under the marine specialist Simon de Vlieger. The family settled in Amsterdam, where father and son developed a distinctive working method: the Elder produced meticulous ship portraits and battle drawings, often sketched from small boats sent out among the fleets themselves, which the Younger then developed into finished oil paintings. In 1672, the economic collapse that followed the French invasion of the Dutch Republic disrupted their livelihood, and by 1674 both van de Veldes had entered the service of Charles II in England. They were given a generous salary and a shared studio in the Queen's House at Greenwich, with the Elder tasked with recording naval engagements from life and the Younger converting these studies into paintings, a division of labour that continued under James II. Willem the Younger moved to Westminster in 1691 and remained the pre-eminent marine painter working in England until his death in 1707. His paintings, characterised by acute observation of individual named vessels, weather and sea conditions, and a controlled, almost documentary approach to naval subject matter, established a model that later British marine painters, including Dominic Serres and the Younger's own English followers, continued to draw upon for generations. Willem van de Velde the Younger's work is held by the National Gallery, the National Maritime Museum and the Wallace Collection in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, among many other major collections, and his paintings continue to command exceptional prices at auction, with one canvas reaching over nine million US dollars at Christie's in 2011. The standard catalogue of his and his father's work remains Michael S. Robinson's The Paintings of the Willem van de Veldes (1990), itself building on decades of scholarship undertaken at the National Maritime Museum, where Robinson served as Keeper of Pictures. John Mitchell Fine Paintings' holdings of Willem van de Velde the Younger reflect the gallery's long-standing expertise in British and Dutch marine painting, a specialism that runs through its handling of related artists including Dominic Serres, Robert Cleveley and the Cleveley family more broadly. The gallery's paintings by van de Velde the Younger include night-time naval action and depictions of specific named vessels running before the wind, subjects that exemplify the precise, ship-by-ship accuracy for which he remains celebrated among specialist collectors and museums alike.