British Marine Painting

by Unknown

But the present-day painter is expected to be more precise; and if he does not fulfil this expectation he will find that there are plenty of people who are ready and willing to call him to account. He has to face a more critical generation than his predecessors knew, a generation which travels more and has much wider opportunities of acquiring knowledge of many subjects, and he has to reckon with a familiarity with marine details that has become an eminently British characteristic. Picturesque improbabilities would not be left unquestioned now; there would be scathing comments by nautical experts, and even the ordinary man would not hesitate to voice his doubts. Perhaps we have grown a little pedantic in this demand for strict reality, but, all the same, it is not unreasonable to require from the painter who puts a ship into his picture evidence that he knows a fair amount about that ship’s construction and how it should behave in the situation he assigns to it. Even a piece of imaginative fantasy is none the worse for being based judiciously on solid fact.

Beside the purely marine painting, the picture that is concerned solely with the sea and ships that sail on it, there is a place for the coast subject. It is true that the coast scene is, more often than not, only a landscape into which the sea is introduced as a subsidiary interest, but under this heading can be included also those views of harbours, estuaries, cliffs, and beaches, which many painters have treated with distinction of style and charm of sentiment. Yet even the coast scene in which the actual nearness of the sea is only suggested owes its character to the sea. Only the sea could have carved those cliffs into their impressive shapes, or could have piled up those masses of huge rocks. Only the winds which blow in from the sea could have moulded that range of sand dunes or could have twisted those stunted trees into their curiously picturesque forms. Only as a protection against the savage strength of the sea has that breakwater been built behind which the fleet of fishing boats lies in shelter. And from the sea come those driving mists and slow-moving banks of fog which throw a veil of mystery over the landscape and give a new aspect to even the most familiar objects. The scent of the sea is in the air, the sound of its waves is unceasing, its influence is all about; the coast is, indeed, but the subject of the sea and owes to it allegiance.

It is in this spirit, unquestionably, that many artists have painted the coast, with a sense of the dominating power of the sea and a conscious acknowledgement of its influence. They have appreciated the dramatic value of the persistent struggle between the sea and the land, a struggle of which the evidences are not to be mistaken; and they have felt the nature of the resistance which the land, an unwilling subject, offers to the encroachments of its tyrant. Even in pictures which represent the coast in its most peaceful moments, when the sea ripples lazily round the rocks under the light of the summer sun, the scars left by the assaults of waves driven by past storms cannot be concealed. Fragments torn from the cliffs strew the shore, the wreckage of the land is heaped up waiting for the inevitable moment when the sea, renewing its attack, will swallow up what it has already half destroyed. The note of tragedy is always present, there is always a suggestion that the sea is merely waiting its opportunity and that when the time comes it will rend and overwhelm and assert its ruthlessness without mercy or restraint.

The same kind of sentiment marks the picture of the harbour subject in which man’s conflict with the sea is illustrated. Humanity is perpetually at war with the forces of nature, and is always seeking to keep them in check, with, at best, only partial success. Incessant watchfulness is necessary, constant effort to repair what is as constantly wrecked and overthrown, unwearying patience and unceasing toil. Often man sees something he has done blotted out utterly by nature’s act, and he has to start again and build up anew from the very beginning, knowing as he builds that he is defying a power stronger than himself, more patient than he is and more serenely confident of ultimate success. Yet he goes on with his work, patching, renewing, rebuilding, and fighting stubbornly every step forward or back.

That is why there is an element of romance in the picture which has for its motive something that men have constructed to protect themselves against the inroads of the sea, some piece of work that suggests the shifts and contrivances used to secure a measure of shelter from the violence of the waves and the fury of the storm. The story which such a picture has to tell is full of significance because the facts presented by the artist sum up a series of human activities and throw light upon the conditions under which these activities have been carried on. It is a story, too, with an appeal because it shows a phase of human endurance which deserves sympathy and respect, sympathy for the difficulties encountered, and respect for the way in which they have been overcome; and it has its full measure of picturesqueness and artistic fitness by which its claim to serious treatment is amply justified.

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. That this should be is scarcely surprising for, after all, the painters who risk the perils of the deep even for brief excursions are much fewer than those who wander along the coast in search of material, and to most men the combination of land and sea offers more attractive problems than the less-known waste of waters. 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. It is not given to many people, artists or laymen, to feel the profound mystery and the dramatic grandeur of the open sea; there are plenty, however, who can sense the appeal of the broken and battered coast and find romance in the harbours and tidal inlets.

From a purely technical standpoint the coast picture is also more convenient than the painting of the open sea; it is easier to compose satisfactorily and to arrange in proper order. As a matter of space-filling and pattern-making it is much less difficult to construct a design with the vertical or sloping lines of cliffs or rocks contrasting with the horizontals of the sea than it is when the picture is divided into sea and sky with nothing to break the severe simplicity of the composition. This technicality has evidently perplexed many sea painters, and has not infrequently led them into rather strained devices to obtain variety—into exaggeration of the tones of the sky and over-accentuation of cloud forms, or into the introduction of shipping where the subject was already too complicated to require an added interest. Such evasions of a difficulty by artificial means are, however, not to be defended, and the artist who feels that the purely marine picture is too great a tax upon his powers had better not stray from the coast where there is plenty of more amenable pictorial material at his disposal. He is a wise man who recognizes his own limitations and does not invite trouble by trying to conceal his deficiencies in a branch of practice for which he is unsuited.

There is another type of art which can be brought legitimately under the heading of marine painting—the representation of the life of the people who have dealings with the sea and obtain from it their means of existence. The sailors, the fisher-folk, the many who work by and on the sea have their part in its story and provide the artist with ample matter by which this story can be appropriately illustrated. They live picturesquely and they are admirably in harmony with their surroundings; they work hard, but in the freedom of the open air, and they are not cramped within the walls of the shop or factory. In their occupation there is always the spice of adventure and there are many moments of danger, many tragic happenings, and many incidents which test severely both mind and body. But all this develops character and sets its stamp upon the seaman’s personality, marking with signs that cannot be mistaken his place in the community.

Of the figure pictures by British artists which are popular to-day, and for which continued appreciation can safely be prophesied, a large number have for subject something that refers to the sea. The North-West Passage, by Sir John Millais, is, for instance, an inspiring reminder in its spirit and sentiment of a series of sea adventures which must for ever stand to the credit of the British race; and Bramley’s Hopeless Dawn tells eloquently the story of a tragedy only too sadly common where men seek a precarious livelihood on the treacherous sea. Other pictures like the Hon. John Collier’s Last Voyage of Henry Hudson, and H. S. Tuke’s All Hands to the Pumps, give us full opportunity to judge the nature of the dangers to which seamen are exposed; while others again, like Napier Hemy’s Pilchards, and Colin Hunter’s Their Only Harvest, show us what kind of work occupies the fisher-folk and the other coast dwellers whose necessities the sea supplies. Another aspect of the subject is seen in Tuke’s August Blue, and C. W. Wyllie’s Digging for Bait, which suggest those pleasanter moments when life by the sea has its genial and enjoyable side and the stress and turmoil of the winter storms are for a while forgotten.

These particular pictures are quoted because, being all in a national collection, they are accessible to every one and are permanently available to illustrate the varying relation of humanity with the sea. They represent a class of production within which is comprehended a wide range of subjects and to which a host of distinguished artists have made important contributions; they point the direction in which there is still much to be found that is worthy of the most serious consideration and the most carefully applied treatment; and they mark the lines along which men who have the faculty of observation and a capacity for personal interpretation can travel to great accomplishment. There is, indeed, hardly any kind of sentiment that does not, in this connexion, lend itself well to the artist’s purpose: tragedy, domestic drama, romance, pure fantasy, comedy even, are all permissible, and often a picture with the most attractive qualities can be made out of a plain statement of everyday facts, so picturesque is the setting which the sea life provides for the people who lead it. 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 men have not found it necessary to depart from strict reality to give interest and convincing strength to their pictures. By being true to fact, by recording faithfully what they saw around them, they have added to British art much that is well worth possessing, and they have proved that realism under suitable conditions is a factor of infinite value in pictorial production. They have had ample scope for the exercise of their selective sense and for the use of their powers of observation, and even though they have chosen to deal with a clearly defined class of material they have not been hampered by limitations which checked the free expression of their temperamental preferences. This is because the sea life is so abounding in action, and because the people who lead it are of so many types and so unstereotyped in their ways, that to the painter who works by the sea a constant succession of new motives is presented, and motives, too, which by their picturesqueness and human interest satisfy completely the artistic demand.