A Royal Yacht, Possibly the 'Mary'<br><p>A portrait of a smack-rigged royal yacht, which is thought to be the 'Mary'. She has been depicted in port-quarter view, flying the Union flag from the stern. She is firing a salute from her port side, close ashore, and two small boats full of figures appear to be arriving on her starboard side. In the foreground two figures with baskets have been depicted on the shore, presumably for shellfish. A small cargo lighter sails to the right and in the centre distance another ship fires a salute. 
</p><p>De Man was a Dutch artist who worked in England over the period 1707-20, arriving at about the time of the death of van de Velde the Younger. He worked for some of the time at or near Deptford on the Thames, where nearly all the ships that he portrayed were based. He was a competent and accurate recorder of yachts and shipping familiar in the lower reaches of the Thames in the early years of the 18th century. His signature, where it occurs, is 'L. D. Man' in the extreme lower left or right corners of paintings and with the 'D' superposed. This is most likely to be a contraction of 'de', in the same form as used by the Delft painter Cornelius de Man (1621-1706), one of a large Delft family of that name. There is no firmer evidence of a Delft connection for L. de Man but it may have been his point of origin.<br></p>
A Royal Yacht, Possibly the 'Mary'
<bdi><a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q108179602" class="extiw" title="d:Q108179602">L. de Man</a>
</bdi>
1707
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