Pieter Cornelisz van Soest (born ca. 1600-1620, flourished ca. 1640–67) was a Dutch marine art

Marine art

Marine art or maritime art is any form of figurative art that portrays or draws its main inspiration from the sea. Maritime painting is a genre that depicts ships and the sea—a genre particularly strong from the 17th to 19th centuries...

ist, especially prolific in battle-pieces.

Biography

Little is known about him. In 1642 he became Poorter

Poorter

Poorter is a dutch historical term for a type of Dutch or Flemish burgher who had acquired the right to live within the city gates of a city, and also had city rights...

 of Amsterdam. Among his subjects are the Battle of the Downs

Battle of the Downs

The naval Battle of the Downs took place on 31 October 1639 , during the Eighty Years' War, and was a decisive defeat of the Spanish, commanded by Admiral Antonio de Oquendo, by the United Provinces, commanded by Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Tromp.- Background :The entry of France in the Thirty...

 and the Second Anglo-Dutch War

Second Anglo-Dutch War

The Second Anglo–Dutch War was part of a series of four Anglo–Dutch Wars fought between the English and the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries for control over the seas and trade routes....

, particularly the Raid on the Medway

Raid on the Medway

The Raid on the Medway, sometimes called the Battle of the Medway, Raid on Chatham or the Battle of Chatham, was a successful Dutch attack on the largest English naval ships, laid up in the dockyards of their main naval base Chatham, that took place in June 1667 during the Second Anglo-Dutch War...

. Van Soest also depicted the ships Comet Star and Eendracht. His paintings usually have a panoramic view of the battles. Van Soest rendered ships with delicate brushstrokes, while a light impasto

Impasto

In English, the borrowed Italian word impasto most commonly refers to a technique used in painting, where paint is laid on an area of the surface very thickly, usually thickly enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. Paint can also be mixed right on the canvas...

is a feature of his skies.

Note