The Enigma of the Monogram Art history often relies on names, but Monogrammist D.W. forces us to work with a mere cipher. We know this painter only through a small, cryptic monogram—the letters DW—etched onto a drifting log within the foreground waves of a seascape. This lack of a definitive identity does not diminish the work; rather, it highlights a specific, transitional moment in the Dutch Golden Age. The artist was not a prolific…