Vitringa was a lawyer and possibly a poet, as well as being an artist (his brother was a leading Dutch theologian). As he was born and spent his early life in Friesland in the remote north of Holland before moving to Alkmaar, it is not known who might have trained Vitringa as a marine painter, although his paintings and this drawing of a pink and a ship off a rocky coast, suggest a link with Ludolf Backhuysen. The drawing is signed and dated 1702.