Adam Silo (Amsterdam, 25 December 1674 – Amsterdam, 1760) was a Dutch painter who specialized in maritime scenes — particularly naval ships, but with trading and whaling vessels. He after that wrote books upon art and gave drawing lessons to Russian Tsar Peter the Great.
Paintings by Silo can be found at the Amsterdams Historisch Museum in Amsterdam, the Maritiem Museum Rotterdam, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, the National Maritime Museum in London and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, among others. The Hermitage, for instance, has a 1730s achievement by Silo showing fleet maneuvres in the Zuiderzee during Peter the Great’s visit to Amsterdam. The Amsterdams Historisch Museum has the solitary dated painting by Silo, showing a fleet of whalers off Amsterdam: Het IJ met een vloot walvisvaarders gezien vanaf het bolwerk Blauwhoofd (1729).
Silo was born on Christmas Day, 1674, and baptized upon the 30th. At the age of 21, when he married, he was making gold thread and also worked as a ship’s carpenter. He sophisticated worked, until the age of 30, as a master ship’s builder and sea captain. Around 1694, he became a pupil of the artiste Theodor van Pee (circa 1668-1746) and theoretical to paint.
In 1697, he gave guidance in the drawing of ships to Peter the Great, who was visiting Amsterdam at the time. Notes made by the tsar during these lessons have survived. Peter the Great after that purchased some of Silo’s paintings.
The multitalented Silo produced not solitary paintings but next prints and drawings, which after that exclusively depicted maritime scenes. Over 20 etchings by Silo are known. He afterward experimented subsequently the mezzotint technique. In his far ahead years, he worked as an instrument builder, making musical instruments, binoculars, magnifying glasses, and telescopes, among others. He next produced wax models.
Silo wrote a number of books, including Afteekeningen van verscheidene soorten en charters van schepen en andere vaartuigen (“Drawings of various types of ships and further vessels”, 1757).
He lived to beyond 80 years of age, and was buried upon 8 October 1760 at the Leidse Kerkhof cemetery in Amsterdam.
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