Oil paintings of seascapes and shipping in the Dutch style had been collected in Britain since the Dutch started making them in quantity. British artists also painted similar scenes to meet the demand from collectors. Clarkson Stanfield was regarded by many of his contemporaries as the best British marine oil painter of his time. His dramatic and accurate depiction of the sea in rough weather was thought preferable to Turner's misty and poetic paintings.
Here the artist shows a fishing boat in difficulties in a storm, with the power of the waves manifest against the tiny craft. The Dogger Bank in the North Sea was one of the best areas for fishing, but was prone to sudden squalls, making the life of a poor fisherman even more hard and dangerous.
Frederick Clarkson Stanfield (1793-1867) was a painter in oils and watercolours, mainly of landscapes and marine views. The son of an actor, J. F. Stanfield, he went to sea as a young boy and was press-ganged into the Royal Navy, but he left the service after being injured. He painted stage scenery for theatres in London, where he was a friend and rival to the Scottish painter, David Roberts (1796-1864) with whom he also collaborated, making dioramas and panoramas.
The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, California, is currently presenting an exhibition of oils, watercolors and drawings by the American landscape painter William Trost Richards.
Richards was influenced by the British art theorist John Ruskin and his doctrine of truth to nature. Ruskin thought that, through close observation and accurate depiction of the natural world, artists would reveal evidence of the Creator's hand. But Richard's work is more than simply faithful to nature, it has a human poetic quality. The human artist is, afterall, a part of the natural world. To be true to nature, an artist must also be true to human nature. While depicting the outer world, an artist should also express the inner world.
Richards concentrated on seascapes in the latter part of his career, when traditional landscape painting began to fall out of favour but there was still a market for romantic images of the sea's wild, lonely, spaces. Throughout his long career he stuck to a painstaking realist style, resisting the trend toward tonalism. Though his work may be considered conservative, he is one of my favorite masters of the genre because of his ability to convey a sense of the transcendental. Since his school days, Richards had a strong interest in literature and poetry, and this seems to have benefitted his work.
Claude Monet, The Rock Needleseen through the Porte d'Aumont, 1885
By looking for unconventional viewpoints and qualities of light, great painters like Monet breathed new life into the seascape genre of painting. In choosing this unusual keyhole view, he was clearly interested in image-making not just plein air painting.
Image-making gives a work an iconic quality that remains in the imagination of the viewer for a long time.
To make a strong, interesting image it is necessary to simplify and unify the composition and avoid scenes that have been painted to death.
Image-making can involve the use of some kind of visual ambiguity. In this work the eye sees the gap in the rock as both a figure and a frame.
To paint the sea, you must love it, and to love it, you must know the sea. - Frederick Judd Waugh
About this Blog
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This blog is intended as a reference resource for seascape painters (particularly those working in oils) and for art lovers. It's a mix of nautical/maritime art, seascapes and coastal scenes, both old and new. The blog is of a non-profit, educational nature; however, if you are the owner of an image and would like it removed, please advise in a comment to the post. Add comments by clicking on the word 'comments' under a post.
Copyright of images of paintings on this blog are usually held by the artist or owner and are not generally in the public domain.
A large proportion of the artists are from the US simply because their work seems to be easier to find on the internet, and perhaps the genre is more popular there, but suggestions of famous painters from other countries (and for the blog in general) are welcome.
Apologies if a link to an artist's or gallery's website has been inadvertantly omitted. If you are interested in seeing more, or purchasing, work by any of the artists on this site, google their full name in inverted commas, with perhaps the word 'paintings' or 'artist' and it should take you to their site or the site of a gallery representing them.
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry