Marine painting

“ BRITISH MARINE PAINTING TO most people it will seem quite natural that British artists should give much attention to marine painting. The sea plays a very important part in our national affairs, influences the character of the people, and affects the political policy of the country, so almost as a matter of course it has its place among the sources of inspiration for our native art. ”

“ For instance, the painter properly equipped would make the right distinction, both in colour and wave form, between the deep sea and that in shallow places; between the transparency of waves breaking on a rocky coast and those on a sandy beach; between the wave action in a tidal current moving with or against the wind; or between the seas that are penned in a narrow channel and those that are running free in wide spaces. These are elementary matters, perhaps, in the study of marine painting, but elementary or not they are only too often misapprehended by the careless observer ”

“ The sea painter must, for the credit of art, keep clear of such silly tricks and mechanical devices. He must be logical both in his observations and in the use he makes of them, and he must be consistent in his statement of the facts before him. A picture in which the sea suggests half a gale while the sky is one which would be seen only in a dead calm is an obvious absurdity, and it would be not less ridiculous to paint the full colours of sunlight in an atmosphere of mist and driving rain; yet these things are done by artists from whom more regard for truth is to be expected. ”

“ The variety of effects and relations is infinite. You must study them, paint them in the presence of nature, and use your eyes; only remember the general principles of air and atmosphere and light and color that I have spoken of elsewhere—all have most vital importance on marine painting. You must study these, and think of them, and in the presence of sea or sky observe their bearings, and apply them as well as you can. ”

“ From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards there has been a steadily growing tendency to enlarge the scope of marine painting and to allow to the men who practise it more and more freedom in the assertion of their personal feeling in art matters. ”

“ The conventional arrangement, the poetic transcription of fact, the realistic study, the decorative interpretation, and the frank expression of the modern idea are all presented and are available for intelligent comparison. The capabilities, too, of marine painting are made clear, and the extent of opportunity it affords to the serious student of art. There{25} are illustrations which have a specially instructive significance because of the technical knowledge of the subject displayed in them; there are others which are interesting on account of their imaginative quality ”

“ What is particularly to be learned from Henry Moore’s pictures is the wide variety of matters which have to be studied by the men who aspire to paint the sea with a sufficient measure of artistic fitness. There are, of course, many ways of representing the sea pictorially—as a background or setting to some nautical incident; as an accessory in a scene which has humanity for its main interest; as a generalized scheme of colour or tone; as a decorative motive with conventionalized forms; or as a poetically indefinite fantasy in which nearly everything is left to the imagination of the beholder. ”

“ Possibly, being a conscientious person, he decides to paint one aspect only of the sea and to specialize in one type of subject which he can master by long and laborious practice; or, being less particular, he builds up a pretty convention which will help him to turn out superficially attractive things that will please a none too critical public. But in neither way is the great sea painter made, the painter who can tell the story of the sea and convey to us its sentiment and its character. ”

“ Dutch artists have painted the sea and shipping and incidents in the life of the dwellers on the coast with skill and distinction; there have been sea painters in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, some in France, a few in Italy and Spain; but it is in the British Isles most of all that the possibilities of marine painting have been recognized and the pictorial material that the sea provides has been turned to full account. ”

“ His picture is entirely credible: he makes us believe that he has put before us what actually happened, and he treats the whole motive with a seamanlike understanding that clears it of all suspicion of artificiality. Compositions of this type were popular a century ago, when the sea painters had opportunities to witness such picturesque, yard-arm to yard-arm naval actions; the sea-fights of to-day do not lend themselves so well to the artist’s purposes. A good deal of the drama must inevitably be lost when miles of water intervene between the opposing fleets. ”

“ Landscape, in modern times so important a branch of painting, is also an outcome of the traditional figure-piece, for at first it is nothing but a background to a scene in which human figures are prominent. Marine Painting is a branch of landscape art differentiated from this, but supplied at first in the same way with figure-interest. ”

“ The marine painters of our modern days who work with conscience and a love of completeness owe, perhaps, more than they realize to these predecessors of theirs who established the tradition of serious effort to get things right, and who built this tradition upon first-hand knowledge.
But to some extent it is to the example of these specialists that must also be ascribed the skill in sea painting that, as time went on, was attained by many{13} of their contemporaries who did not deal systematically with this class of subject. ”

“ By that time artists were moving about much more freely in search of motives, and many of them made frequent visits to the coast with the particular intention of mastering the problems of sea painting, and of studying at first hand phases of nature which were to them comparatively new. ”

“ Moreover, the interest taken by the public in sea pictures had grown in a marked degree, and there was a demand which the popular artist was called upon to satisfy. So most of the landscape men alternated regularly between inland views and coast scenes, and painted both with the same sincerity and the same strength of purpose. Constable, David Cox, De Wint, Copley Fielding, Edward Duncan, J. S. Cotman—to quote a few of the more notable names—added important records of sea and coast subjects to the list of their more memorable productions ”

“ Indeed, the paintings of the fringe and surrounding of the sea which have been produced by British artists uphold worthily the best traditions of our school; they include much that proves indisputably the powers of our greater masters, and certainly they are more numerous than the pictures of the open sea. ”

“ There have been in the recent past, there are at work to-day, artists who have studied the sea in the most sympathetic spirit and whose seriousness of effort deserves the highest praise, artists whose accomplishment would be wholly satisfying if Turner had not shown so brilliantly the greater possibilities of sea painting ”

“ The habitual landscape painter, accustomed to fixed forms and effects that followed more or less regular rules, might easily have drifted into a conventional representation of the sea if he had not been shown the way to look at it by the men who knew it intimately, and if works by these men had not existed to provide him with the means of testing his own achievement. ”

“ Sea painters of the higher rank have come with scarcely an exception from countries which have an extended coast-line and in which the seafaring habit has been developed by centuries of maritime activity—countries in which the use of the sea for purposes of commerce or communication has been a necessity. ”

“ During recent years, indeed, many painters have established themselves by the sea with the express intention of seeking there material for important works, and many others have paid long visits to our coasts for the sake of studying at close quarters the subjects which are so plentifully available; and these{24} men have not found it necessary to depart from strict reality to give interest and convincing strength to their pictures. ”

“ Moreover, there is a wider public for the coast scene (and few artists can afford to disregard the popular demand) , because the great majority of people gain their impressions of the sea by looking at it from the land and but rarely seek for experiences afloat. The purely marine subject seen intimately and interpreted finely offers opportunities for a higher type of achievement, and in some respects calls for more concentrated study; but where the land and sea meet there is a more obvious variety of pictorial suggestions and the touch of romantic sentiment is more apparent. ”

“ A few steps further and a lifting of the horizon, with a breath of fresher air coming at the same moment—a filling as it were of new vigour—suddenly ensued, and at once the sea bursts upon our view, gleaming, rolling, fading far away into the distance, of that deep pure beautiful colour, the true ultra-marine tint, which only a Cornish sea, so far as I know, possesses, and which Mr. Hook, as I think, alone among artists, can paint. ”

“ We see a manned boat and a wrecking ship upon the immense ocean, with its swirling drift blown across like a tongue of tormented flame; and huge volumes of grey cloud over the horizon, walling out from the sea the gorgeous dawn of a new day, on fire with the blaze of sunlight. The painting of the vast sea-surface is a very great effort of knowledge and mastery, and a very successful one. ”

“ Between the great northern current, and the breeze which plumes the innumerable waves with sparkling white, our course has become rather more tortuous and rough than is agreeable to landsmen who have only come abroad upon the deep for pleasure and instruction. The painter has cleaned his pallet, wiped his brushes, shut his painting-box, and gone below. I am sitting here, near the helm, close upon the deck, screened from the spray that occasionally flies over, heavily coated, and cold at that, making some almost illegible notes. Life, it is often said, is a stormy ocean. ”

“ A man of truest culture, generous heart, and rarely erring taste. I never go there without finding something new and admirable.
"What am I to see, this time?" I asked, after dinner, looking about the drawing-room.
"Come. I'll show you."
He led me up to a painting,—a sea-piece:—A schooner, riding at her anchor, at sunset, far out at sea, no land in sight, sails down, all but a little patch of storm-sail fluttering wildly in the gale, and heavily pitching in a great, grand, rolling sea; around, but not closely enveloping her, a driving fog-bank, lurid in the yellow sheen of the setting sun ”

“ A heavy surf thundered and burst over an outjutting rock; lowering storm-clouds covered the sky; and, outside the line of surf, a pilot-schooner, close-hauled, heeled over till every detail of her deck was visible, was surging along against a stormy sunset sky. There was beauty, and it drew him irresistibly. He forgot his awkward walk and came closer to the painting, very close. The beauty faded out of the canvas. His face expressed his bepuzzlement. He stared at what seemed a careless daub of paint, then stepped away. Immediately all the beauty flashed back into the canvas. ”

“ The tranquil depth of the ocean, the possibility that its depths may break forth with infinite power is akin to soul movements, just as conversely the roaring, upwelling, foaming, and break of storm-tossed waves stir the soul with concordant music. It is an ideal significance of this kind that the art of painting accepts as its object. ”

“ Here are antique mosaics, in which colored stones seem liquefied, realizing the most beautiful effects of painting—quadrigae, warriors, arms, armor, vases, streams, all lifelike. Ascending to the hall of French paintings I spent an hour in studying one picture—La Méduse, by Géricault. It is a shipwrecked crew upon a raft in mid ocean. I gazed until all surrounding objects disappeared, and I was alone upon the wide Atlantic. Those transparent emerald waves are no fiction; they leap madly, hungering for their prey. That distended sail is filled with the lurid air. ”

“ All this sounds like a good deal to undertake; but to the man who loves the water and what sails upon it, it is only following his liking, and any one who does not love all this should content himself with only the most incidental sea painting; for sea pictures are not to be painted from recipes any more than any other thing, and ships particularly cannot be represented without an understanding of them. And after all, you do not have to do all this study at once. If you will only study well each thing that you do, and never paint one vessel or boat without understanding that one ”

“ The sky occupies much of his space, he makes searching studies of it, and his favourite effect is a flash of light shooting across a piled-up mass of clouds. The line of the horizon is low, and he exhibits great mastery in painting the wide lagoons, but he also paints rough seas, and is one of the few masters of his day—perhaps the only one—who succeeds in representing a storm at sea. ”

“ They are so sharp, so vivid, so detailed, so true, that a marine painter might work from them. And the really remarkable thing about them is the infinite variety of these seascapes and skyscapes. He seems never to repeat himself. ”