Egide Linnig

Linnig was not happy with the emphasis placed on history painting by Mattheus Ignatius van Bree, the director of the academy.

[1] While still enrolled at the academy, Linnig participated in the Triennial Salon of Antwerp in 1840 exhibiting two marine paintings, Fishing for Herring on the Dogger Bank and Coast near Zierikzee.

In the summer of the following year he joined the crew of fishing boats in order to study all ship maneuvers in detail.

One of the trips inspired him to the painting The brig 'Timor' shipwrecked off the English coast, which he exhibited at the Triennial Salon in Brussels in 1842.

In the late 1840s and early 1850s Linnig participated a total of three times in the "Exhibition of Living Masters" in the Netherlands with the following works: The wreckage of a Sardinian vessel (The Hague, 1847), Storm (Rotterdam, 1848) and The wintering of Barends and van Heemskerk on Nova Zembla.

It depicts the trading vessel the 'Constant' after it ran on a coral reef off the coast of a small island near New Guinea on 15 June 1858.

[6] Linnig often signed and dated his work and occasionally drew the Masonic symbol of the square and compass alongside his signature as he was a Freemason.

Linnig is a typical representative of this movement in the choice of his subject matter, which covers the usual romantic scenes such as storms, high seas and shipwrecks.

Other extreme moments which he treated regularly were skies at the time of a threatening storm with lightning and heavy cloud masses that create a contrast between the sunny foreground and the dark background scenery or vice versa.

[5] A good example of Linnig's Romantic pursuit of effects can be seen in The Soho enters the Scheldt estuary near Flushing (1843, Museum aan de Stroom), which is perhaps one of the most impressive paintings in his oeuvre.

Linnig treats the subject in a particularly original manner by portraying the "Soho", a steamer of the London General Steam & Navigation Company, not as seen from its starboard or its port side as was customary, but rather in frontal view.

This special angle, combined with details such as the ship's powerful radar unit, the rough sea, the stormy weather and the dilapidated guardhouse create an energetic and dynamic composition.