British Marine Painting

by Unknown

From Copley Fielding to Edwin Hayes is a wide step—a jump from the methods of the past to those of the present day. Yet in actual time the two men were not so widely separated, for Hayes was born some while before Fielding died, and counted several of the earlier British masters among his older contemporaries. Fielding, however, was brought up in a tradition which had a strong hold upon the painters who were working at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and he made no real effort to break away from it, though in his interpretation of it he was, in some respects, less narrow than his fellows. But the formula influenced him as it did nearly all the other men of that date, and it gave a sort of set pattern to the paintings even of those artists who had the sincerest possible desire to be faithful to nature and to study her seriously and persistently.

The effect of this formula was to regulate the composition and to prescribe the introduction of shipping in certain specified positions so as to conform to an accepted pictorial convention. To its dominance is due the general similarity which can be perceived between the works of John Wilson, Chambers, Crawford, and Müller, here illustrated, and which could be followed out in many other pictures by the lesser painters of the time—a similarity which was neither accidental nor unconscious, but directly induced by adherence to what were held to be the correct principles of picture designing. Moreover, there seems to have been a belief then that a painting of the sea must have some added interest to assure it of popularity, for a sea without shipping prominently placed upon it was hardly ever attempted; an incident was almost always introduced or a story suggested.

When Edwin Hayes began his career the earlier tradition was losing its authority and was being replaced by a less limited conception of the sea-painter’s mission. To some extent he came under it in his youth, but he was naturally responsive to new ideas and kept pace with the more modern developments. Anyhow, in his Sunset at Sea (p. 63) there is no hint of the old convention, and there is no trace of the belief that an added interest was required to make a sea picture attractive. He was content to give faithfully his impression of the sea as it appeared before him, to tell no story save nature’s own, and to take for his incident the gleam of sunlight upon tossing waves stirred into movement by the wind—a poor subject, perhaps, according to the old standards, but one which to-day appeals to us as admirably satisfying and essentially complete.

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. That is why so much material of the most varied character is available now for the illustration of this branch of pictorial production, and why so many artists seek in it opportunities for the display of their capacities. They can approach it from the point of view that suits them best, they can interpret what they find there in the way that seems to them most appropriate, and they can, if their study is sincere, get most closely into touch with nature’s secrets.

One entirely legitimate point of view is given adequate demonstration in the two pictures, The Kyles of Bute by C. Parsons Knight (p. 65), and From the Dorsetshire Cliffs by John Brett (p. 67). Both pictures are records, plain and uncompromising statements of fact, and in neither of them is anything unaccounted for or any detail left for the imagination of the spectator to supply. Frankly, the intention of both painters was to put in everything that the most acute vision could detect in the scene represented and to attain completeness by painstaking effort; and undeniably both painters have justified themselves by the thoroughness with which they have carried out this intention. Yet to many people so much labour to prove the sincerity of the artist would seem to be unnecessary and to savour somewhat of pedantry; knowledge so lavishly displayed—and with such scrupulous regard for accuracy—is not always persuasive. But such pictures have every right to exist, and there is a place for them in art.

So there is, too, for conceptions of such a totally different type as The Wreck by C. E. Holloway (p. 68), and the Marine by Whistler (p. 69). These go to the opposite extreme, eliminating detail, avoiding precise and careful explanations, conceding nothing to the unimaginative man who can only believe what is made perfectly clear to his limited vision. They demand from every one who sees them a full measure of thought and intelligent analysis so that the shrewd understanding which controls their apparent carelessness of method can be estimated at its proper worth. Holloway’s painting is, in fact, only a rapid note in which he has visualized a momentary impression, but visualized it so surely that he has been able to make other people see just what he himself saw in the subject. Whistler’s Marine is an impression, too, a summary of movement and wave action; but it is something more than a simple realization of the fundamental things in nature because into the treatment of it a decorative intention has been definitely admitted. By the painter’s skill the formality of the design has been cleverly concealed, and by the spontaneity of his method the deliberate processes of his art are kept from being too apparent; but formality and deliberation have both contributed to the successful evolution of a very significant picture.

Quite a different kind of sentiment pervades Hook’s vigorous canvas, The Seaweed Raker (p. 71). He was not concerned with subtleties of suggestion or with problems of decorative adjustment, but with the robust representation of nature’s ruggedness, and there was a simple honesty in his virile, forcible work. He understood the sea, and though he looked at it in rather a literal way he never made his paintings of it commonplace. Partly this was due, no doubt, to the unaffected directness of his executive devices and to the frankness of his craftsmanship—he never resorted to any graceful artifices to soften off the bare facts of his subjects—but there came in also the influence of a temperament which was by no means insensible to the romance of the sea and to the sombre poetry of the seaman’s life. That Hook was one of the greatest of British marine painters can fairly be claimed.

But greater still was Henry Moore, greater because his insight was even more acute and because, while he equalled Hook in robustness, he used his powers with more reserve. He was a finer colourist, a truer judge of tone relations, and more sensitive to refinements of atmospheric effect; and as an executant he had a lighter and more flexible touch. A lifelong painter of the open air, he began to study the sea almost at the outset of his career, and for some years alternated between landscapes and marine pictures, but eventually devoted himself almost exclusively to the branch of practice in which, as he plainly proved, he was without a serious rival. The particular charm of his work—a charm that is very apparent in the two examples reproduced—is in its suggestion of space and wide expansiveness, and of the recession of the surface of the sea to the far horizon. From such a picture as A Breezy Day—which forms a frontispiece to this article—many lessons are to be learned in the management of tone values to express distance, and in the treatment of clouds not as a background but as an overhanging canopy in true perspective; and both this and the Break in the Cloud (p. 72) show most clearly the certainty with which he could draw the form of different kinds of waves and give to them their proper movement. And all this he did without appearance of labour and without exaggerated display of technical facility, but invariably with the quiet confidence that comes from exact and well-tried knowledge.

Colin Hunter’s Farewell to Skye (p. 73) seems, somehow, to have about it a touch of sentimentality and to be lacking in force. Perhaps this impression comes partly from the title, but it is encouraged also by the sweetness of the composition with its flow of curving lines and its carefully balanced distribution of lights and darks. But as a study of a picturesque coast scene the picture is pleasing, and as a note of an effect of evening illumination it has much merit. It represents well an artist who possessed his full share of the Scottish feeling for romance and whose methods were sound, and it can justly claim a place among the more popular of modern marine paintings. There is a place, too, for W. McTaggart’s Sounding Sea (p. 74), a picture very different in inspiration and technical manner and yet as definitely expressive of the Scottish temperament. Like all McTaggart’s works, it arrests attention by the strength of its personal conviction and by the characteristic method of handling that he has employed, and to this attention it is fully entitled.

Frank Brangwyn’s In Port (p. 75) has a story to tell, the story of a voyage ended and of the safe arrival of a homeward-bound ship. The artist has not embroidered his subject with any touches of fancy; he has dealt with it as a simple matter of fact and as an everyday incident in the concerns of a seaport town—an incident which excites hardly more than momentary interest among the idlers on the quay. Yet by this very reticence he seems to give point to his story and to emphasize the British attitude towards sea life as something to which the people are accustomed and which they treat as an obvious part of the national heritage. It is, perhaps, because he has been at sea himself that he has no inclination to be either sensational or sentimental in painting what a sailor would regard as a very ordinary occurrence; it is undoubtedly to his experience afloat that can be ascribed the air of intimacy which pervades the picture and the sterling accuracy with which every detail of it is rendered. Of course, as a painter he is exceptionally distinguished, but even the painter of distinction is none the worse for possessing an expert technical understanding of the material which he proposes to depict upon his canvas. In this instance the combination of nautical experience and high artistic ability has been productive of unusually satisfying results.