marine painting. Historically, at least up to the late 19th century when the camera became generally available as an instrument of record, the overall volume of marine painting, of whatever country of origin, remains of great importance as a source of knowledge of shipbuilding and design, of sails and rigging, of ship decoration such as figureheads, and of the transitional age when iron superseded wood as the material of construction, and steam propulsion superseded sail as the means of propulsion. It is a record, too, of warfare at sea throughout the great sea campaigns of the 16th–18th centuries. Of this historical value it is possible to speak with great certainty; of the aesthetic value of marine painting in the overall field of art, and of its inspirational value in focusing the endeavour and activity of man in his conquest of the sea, there can hardly be less doubt.

Early Marine Painting.

The earliest known pictures of ships and boats are those which decorate Egyptian pottery of the period around 3200 bc. Wall paintings and reliefs of the two periods of Egyptian ascendancy, 2500–2300 bc and 1500–1085 bc, are often of such clarity and detail that contemporary methods of shipbuilding and rig are made clear. The methods and weapons employed in warfare at sea can be seen in a wall painting in the temple of Medinet Habu to the west of Thebes on the upper Nile. It depicts the victory of the Egyptian fleet of Rameses III (1198–1166 bc) over the combined fleets of sea-raiders from Crete, Cyprus, Philistia, and Libya.

Of the periods of Greek and Roman sea power, no true paintings exist beyond some pottery decoration. A Greek vase dating from 540 bc has a painting of a Greek merchant vessel being pursued by a pirate galley, and a carving in relief from the temple of Fortune at Praesneste shows one of the Roman warships at the battle of Actium in 31 bc. There are also, of course, the coloured representations of French ships of 1066 in the Bayeux Tapestry, which provide details of contemporary building and rig.

Renaissance Painting.

Representations of the sea and ships appear in many paintings of the early Renaissance. The Birth of Venus by Botticelli (1444/5–1510); Volpe's painting of Henry VIII leaving Dover on his way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520 in his great ship Henry Grâce à Dieu; and the equally well-known picture of Portuguese carracks by the Dutch painter Cornelis Anthonisz (c.1499–c.1560), all show the features and build of ships with great skill and attention. However, they all lack any verisimilitude in representing the sea around them. These famous pictures are in no way seascapes, but merely portraits of ships.

Dutch Marine Painters.

The true birth of marine painting, which can be taken as portraying the sea itself as well as the ships that sailed on it, occurred in Holland in the second half of the 16th century, coinciding with the rise to maritime power of the Dutch Republic, and the first Dutch painter to specialize in seascape as such was Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom (1566–1640), who painted a picture of Dutch ships running into the port of Flushing in the teeth of a gale. It is his finest picture and shows a rare feeling for both ships battling against a high wind and the anger and force of a rough sea. It was the first true seascape in that it directly related the sea conditions with the behaviour of ships affected by them. Vroom, incidentally, is probably best known in Britain for his designs for the series of tapestries of the Spanish Armada which the Lord High Admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham (1536–1624), commissioned from him. Unfortunately, these tapestries were destroyed in a fire in the House of Lords in 1834, though they survive in the form of engravings made by John Pine (1699–1756).

Vroom began a school of painting which was carried on by such Dutch artists as Jan Porcellis (c.1585–1680), who has been described as the ‘Raphael of sea painters’, and Abraham Storck (c.1635–c.1710) who painted a magnificent picture, full of life, colour, and movement, of the Four Days Battle between the English and Dutch fleets in 1666 which now hangs in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. It was a school which reached its greatest heights with Willem van de Velde (1610–93) and his son, also called Willem (1633–1707). Another Dutch master of seascape of that era, Ludolf Bakhuyzen (1631–1708), made a speciality of storm scenes at sea, and would gather his material by going to sea himself in bad weather.

British Marine Painters.

The two van de Veldes came to England during the winter of 1672–3 to become marine painters to Charles II. They received pensions from the king, the father for ‘taking and making draughts of seafights’, the son for ‘putting the said draughts into colour for our own particular use’. The son, in fact, settled in England and their paintings and drawings, particularly those of the father, are accepted as a historical archive of great value in portraying the naval architecture and rig of the period, and the tactics and manoeuvres of naval battles. However, the son's paintings are considered superior to the father's because of his sensitive feeling for light, atmosphere, and the sea.

The period of the van de Veldes's later life in Britain corresponded with the rise of British sea power to a dominant position in the world, and the influence of their meticulous style can be seen in the early paintings of the British school of marine painting which grew up at about this time. The British marine artists Peter Monamy (1681–1749), the first eminent English marine artist, Charles Brooking (1723–59), and Samuel Scott (c.1702–72), if not exactly slavish copiers of the van de Veldes, owed much of their style and detail to these great masters. The van de Veldes were also an influence on a later marine painter of note, John Christian Schetky (1778–1874), though his work had a distinctive character all his own which revealed his great knowledge of, and affection for, his subject. A Hungarian by descent, Schetky became marine painter to no less than three British sovereigns, George IV, William IV, and Queen Victoria.

French Marine Painting.

A French painter, Dominic Serres (c.1725–93), was also part of the British marine painting scene of this period. The master of a French merchantman who was captured at sea and brought back to England, he decided to stay and study art, and he soon established himself as a painter of seascapes and naval battles. His practical experience of life at sea brought to his work an authenticity which, in conjunction with a brilliance of colouring and design, made his pictures outstanding examples of the painter's art in the mid-18th century. Ironically, he was to become probably the best of the marine painters of the English school of this period—ironically, because in France the genre received so little encouragement that marine artists never really prospered. A notable exception was Ambroise-Louis Garneray (1783–1857) who started to paint while a naval prisoner of war in a prison hulk in Portsmouth harbour during the Napoleonic War (1803–15). On his return to France he studied art under his father, who was a professional painter, and in 1817 was appointed marine painter to the Duc d'Angoulême, Admiral of France. His best-known painting is perhaps his Battle of Navarino, now in the Musée de la Marine, Paris.

Marine Paintings of the 19th Century.

J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851), the real father of Impressionism, was the outstanding landscape painter of his generation, and his seascapes, though not many in number, are of remarkable beauty in both atmosphere and colouring. He was not in any way an accurate portraitist of ships, as had been the van de Veldes, for instance, but he introduced a particular luminosity and drama in his studies which lifted them to new heights of pure artistry, most notably perhaps in The Fighting Téméraire. Some of his sketches in oils of the River Thames and its shipping, though violently attacked by the art critics of the time for their lack of formal organization, brought a new dimension to the art of seascape.

This was the century when the sailing ship reached its perfection of design and the century which saw the introduction of the iron steamship. The many great English painters of the lovely square-riggers which graced the 19th century are best represented by the Yorkshire artist George Chambers (1803–40), Clarkson Stanfield (1793–1876), who at one time served under Captain Marryat, and Sir Oswald Brierly (1817–94), who studied naval architecture as well as art, and was appointed marine painter to Queen Victoria on the death of Schetky in 1874. Of this period, the pure seascape as such, not depending on the ship as its central theme, flourished under the brushes of Richard Parkes Bonington (1801–28) and John Sell Cotman (1782–1842), both of whom, though better known as landscape artists, produced seascapes of exquisite quality and atmosphere.

The transition from sail to steam propulsion is best represented in the work of W. L. Wyllie (1851–1931), a prolific artist whose watercolours of great delicacy and beauty are as much appreciated as many of his more stirring and dramatic oil paintings. His son Harold (1880–1973) was also a marine painter, and both of them were interested in ship preservation, helping, in particular, with the restoration of HMS Victory. A contemporary of the senior Wyllie was Charles Dixon (1872–1934), whose paintings covered the early days of steamships with loving detail, while another contemporary, known to everyone as Marin-Marie, produced pictures and seascapes that showed his detailed knowledge of the sea and the craft which sailed on it.

In the USA, where Fritz Hugh Lane was the first painter to specialize in seascapes, Winslow Homer (1836–1910) became famous for his paintings of man against the elements. He travelled widely and in 1881 went to England, where he was drawn to the isolated fishing community of Tynemouth on the North Sea, and for two years he sketched and painted the life around him. It was a period in his life which proved crucial to his talent, for when he returned home he moved to a Maine fishing village where the rocky foreshore and the sea began to dominate his work. In the following years he produced such popular paintings as The Life Line (1884), which depicts the rescue of a woman from a shipwreck; Fog Warning (1885); Northeaster (1895); and his best-known work, The Gulf Stream (1899). In this a small sailing boat, wrecked by a storm and with its sole crewman unconscious on its deck, is menaced by sharks and a waterspout, and ignored by a passing ship.

Marine Paintings of the 20th Century.

The two world wars produced a plethora of marine artists, in both Britain and the USA, as a result of naval appointments of painters as official artists to record scenes of naval activity. Sir Muirhead Bone (1876–1953) spanned both world wars as an official artist, and his drawings and etchings were powerful and evocative. Some others who made names in this particular field are Frank Mason, Norman Wilkinson (1878–1971), and Charles Pears (1873–1958), all of whom also produced some memorable paintings of yacht racing between the wars. Other marine painters of note during the first half of the 20th century include Montague Dawson, a great portraitist of the vanishing clipper.

Bibliography

Royal Society of Marine Artists, A Celebration of Marine Art (1996).