HOMAGE to the SEA Cover: JAMES E
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
HOMAGE TO THE SEA Cover: JAMES E. BUTTERSWORTH (1817-1894) The Schooner “Triton” and The Sloop “Christine” Racing In Newport Harbor circa 1884 Oil on canvas 12 x 18 inches Signed, lower right HOMAGE TO THE SEA AN EXHIBITION AND SALE OF 18TH, 19TH & 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN MARINE ART TO BENEFIT INTERNATIONAL YACHT RESTORATION SCHOOL (IYRS) & MUSEUM OF YACHTING JULY 11 - SEPTEMBER 14, 2008 WILLIAM VAREIKA FINE ARTS LTD THE NEWPORT GALLERY OF AMERICAN ART 212 BELLEVUE AVENUE • NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND 02840 WWW.VAREIKAFINEARTS.COM 401-849-6149 There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. whence we came. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures. John F. Kennedy William Shakespeare Remarks at the America’s Cup Dinner, Brutus, Julius Caesar Newport, RI, September 14, 1962 As we enter our twenty-first summer of operation in our Bellevue Avenue gallery, Alison and I are pleased to offer “Homage to the Sea,” a major exhibition and sale of marine artworks by important 18th, 19th and early 20th century American artists. Continuing our gallery’s two-fold mission to present museum-quality art to the public and to raise funds and consciousness about important non-profit causes, we are pleased to donate a percentage of sales from this endeavor to two deserving Newport institutions in the marine field: the Museum of Yachting and the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS). This tradition of using excellence in the arts to help subsidize the vital public service of non-profit organizations has become a defining feature of our gallery and we are grateful to our friends and clients who have supported us in this mission for two decades. We are also very appreciative of the public recognition, honors, and awards that we received during the past twentieth anniversary milestone year, acknowledging our business record and philosophy. Founded in 1979, the Museum of Yachting has worked for more than twenty-five years to preserve the culture and heritage of yachting through the presentation of vessels, artifacts, literature, events, and regattas. The Museum is situated at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, Rhode Island. The Interna- tional Yacht Restoration School (IYRS) was founded in 1993 by Elizabeth Meyer, maritime artist John Mecray, and a group of restoration enthusiasts, yacht designers, boat builders, and educators. Located on a historic waterfront site in downtown Newport, it is an accredited, non-profit institution dedicated to maritime education and preservation. To date, IYRS students have returned nearly 100 A dejected Bill Vareika, his girlfriend Alison and her six- historic boats to the water. Currently the storied 1885 schooner yacht “Coronet” is being restored on year-old son Timothy wait patiently for the return to dock the IYRS campus. of “Liberty” after losing the seventh and final race of the America’s Cup, Newport, RI, September 26, 1983. In May, the Museum of Yachting and IYRS announced the formal merger of their organizations and missions. The Museum of Yachting’s 2008 calendar of events includes an exhibit about the “Grand Voyages of Arthur Curtis James” aboard the “Coronet” and his two “Alohas” that will run concurrently with the “Coronet” restoration project at IYRS. Recently IYRS launched a $7.5 million capital campaign to restore the 1831 Aquidneck Mill Building on its site. Restoration of the Aquidneck Mill will transform 30,000 square feet of unoccupied space into new workshops, classrooms, a library, and an expansive lecture hall. To further their collaboration, the Museum’s Phil Weld Library will be combined with the IYRS student library to form a research center in the newly restored Aquidneck Mill Building. The new library is planned to open to the public in March, 2009. Our summer exhibition “Homage to the Sea” includes over 150 paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints and photographs by many of the best known artists in American history who worked in the marine subject. For three centuries, many of these artists found special creative inspiration in the transcendent natural beauty and varied societies and cultures that developed in the Newport and Narragansett Bay region, forging one of the nation’s leading art centers. It is this rich artistic heritage that has been the focus of our gallery. The current exhibition has a wider scope and also includes the work of American artists who travelled throughout the world in search of artistic stimulation. This catalogue represents a sampling of images from the exhibition. Included are over two centuries of artistic creations which bestow a diverse, beautiful, and inspiring “Homage to the Sea”: the fishing and ship building industries; commercial shipping; the sport of yachting; Naval, military and exploration history; historically relevant port scenes and sublime coastlines; and the grandeur and aesthetic, spiritual and allegorical qualities of the planet’s oceans. I arrived in Newport in the spring of 1974, immediately following college graduation and before my anticipated law school enrollment. The plan was to spend the summer months leading a volunteer effort to save an endangered church building decorated by the important 19th century American artist John La Farge. I had discovered this artist in my one art history course as a prelaw Boston College student and I found that this serendipitous preservation challenge appealed to the ideals of my youth, my era, my Jesuit education, and my belief in the power of fate. The splendor of the Narragansett Bay and the allure of Newport’s historical setting, including the rich artistic and maritime heritage, reinforced the attraction. I found myself responding, as had my predecessors and as President Kennedy expressed, to the sea and its human heritage as a homecoming. Fortunately, the project to save and restore the La Farge church took years and not months to complete, and in the process I fell in love with a woman, a community and the vocation of selling fine art. Shakespeare wrote, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Thirty-four years later, I am grateful for the full sea of success our venture to establish a gallery of museum-quality art and to support important non-profit causes has achieved. Our hope is for full success for our current and future projects as well. Bill Vareika Newport, Rhode Island July 4, 2008 ROBERT SALMON (1775-after 1845) In spite of the enormous influence he had on the development of American marine painting, full details of Robert Salmon’s career are lacking. Salmon was born in 1775, inWhitehaven, Cum- berland, England. on the Scottish bor- der. He moved to London in the late 1790s and then to Liverpool in 1806. Salmon lived in the ship-building town of Greenock on the west coast of Scot- land from 1811 to 1822. The detailed depictions of ships in his paintings re- veal an intimate knowledge of ships and the sea, and reflect the influence of 17th Century Dutch marine painting. His use of diminutive, detailed figures is, how- ever, unique to the genre. Salmon is cred- ited with establishing the luminist tradi- tion in American painting, having strongly influenced William Bradford, Alfred Thompson Bricher, James Hamilton, William Haseltine, Martin Johnson Heade, and Fitz Henry Lane, among others. The Hellen of Glasgow in Two Positions in the Mersey off Liverpool, England Oil on canvas 28 ½ x 45 inches Initialed, lower right Salmon emigrated to Boston in 1828, arriving on the packet ship, “New York.” He established himself as a painter of marine scenes and ship portraits. He also painted the- atrical scenery and panoramas, in- cluding drop curtains for the Fed- eral Street Theatre and a series of fifteen-foot canvases of naval battles. For thirteen years, the artist main- tained a studio on Marine Railway Wharf at the bottom of Hanover Street. It is estimated that he pro- duced about three hundred works while living in Boston. Despite great success as a painter, Salmon resided in a small hut on the wharves of Boston Harbor. He left Boston in 1842, following an auction of his work. It is presumed he returned to England, for a work dated 1843 bears an address label from Liverpool. His last dated works are Italian scenes done in 1845, af- ter which he seems to have disap- peared. There is no record of the date of his death. Salmon’s paintings can be found in galleries and museums throughout Full-Rigged Ships and a Brig off the Coast of England 1808 the United States and Great Britain. Oil on canvas 20 x 30 ¾ inches Initialed and dated, lower right JOSHUA SHAW (1776-1860) Landscape painter and inventor, Joshua Shaw was born in Belling- borough, England, around 1776. He studied to be a sign-painter in Manchester and then established himself as a self-taught portrait, flower, still life, and landscape painter, exhibiting at the Royal Academy in London. In 1817 he came to America and settled in Philadelphia, where he became one of the first artists to record topographical views of American scenery for reproduction. Shaw founded the Artists’ Fund Society and the Artists and Amateur Association in Philadelphia, and published a manual for artists. He traveled along the eastern seaboard and throughout the South, sketching and making watercolors which Ship at Sea were engraved in aquatint by John Hill and published in Philadelphia in 1819-20 as Picturesque Views of American Scenery.