The Unseen Treasures of Nineteenth-Century American Marine Art by Lauren P
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Flying the Colors: The Unseen Treasures of Nineteenth-Century American Marine Art By Lauren P. Della Monica, Janice Hyland and Alan Granby Copyright 2009 Lauren P. Della Monica, Janice Hyland, Alan Granby Flying the Colors: The Unseen Treasures of Nineteenth-Century American Marine Art by Lauren Pheeney Della Monica CHAPTER ONE FINE ART Nineteenth Century American marine artists worked within the wider genre of American Realism characterized by finely-tuned attention to detail both in rendering physical attributes of sea, sky or ships as well as in the reportage quality of the works, that notion of recording the quotidian life of the harbors and their inhabitants. The artists also took measures beyond the realistic, however, and into the abstract realm of emotive content. For some Luminist painters, for example, this meant portraying an active harbor scene full of the bustle of daily life but in an atmosphere charged by the effect of the dusk light upon the sea. For other painters, it meant depicting a bustling harbor at the zenith of tranquility. In a discussion of fine art within Nineteenth Century American marine painting, a few famous names come instantly to mind, such as Fitz Henry Lane, Robert Salmon and William Bradford. In addition, many talented though lesser-known painters of the same generation contributed outstanding seascape and maritime paintings to the body of fine American marine art. In this chapter, we will explore exquisite examples of that body of art both by the famous and the more obscure talents of the time. Thomas Birch (1779-1851) Though he began his artistic career as a portraitist,1 Thomas Birch (1779-1851) is well- known for his marine paintings and especially his naval battle scenes from the War of 1812. Birch depicts an American war ship, the United States, victorious in battle with a tattered British ship that she captured in the War of 1812 shown in Plate 1, in The United States and Macedonian. President John F. Kennedy hung this patriotic, American scene in his office at the 2 Flying the Colors: The Unseen Treasures of Nineteenth-Century American Marine Art by Lauren Pheeney Della Monica White House during his tenure as President of the United States.2 In this battle scene, Birch simplifies his normally packed harbors full of boats down to simply these two named ships. Birch uses various artistic conceits and compositional techniques to portray the victor: the clouds have parted above the American ship to reveal her sunlit, gleaming sails while the British Macedonian languors in shadow; the skies are blue with some fair weather clouds to indicate a pleasing outcome with hope on the horizon in the form of sunlight; Birch shows the United States in a portside posture with no apparent damage, indicating a position of strength, while the Macedonian, its masts snapped like twigs, is shown primarily from the stern with its sails hanging overboard into the sea; the United States flies an American flag high in the sky, flowing in the wind, while the Macedonian’s British ensign has fallen to the ship’s deck; Birch shows the United States in control of the situation by depicting her at full sail with a cloud of white gun smoke erupting from her port side while the Macedonian lies in disrepair, seemingly motionless, with an empty, hapless gig dangling from the stern. In another view of American naval vessels, Birch’s The U.S.N. Pennsylvania (Pl. 2) depicts the United States naval ship, the Pennsylvania, and various other seafaring vessels, circa 1837. Birch presents the Pennsylvania, the largest sailing ship ever built for the U.S. Navy and by far the largest of the vessels in this painting, at the center of the canvas flying an imposing American flag, on a port tack to best display half of her 120 gun ports.3 Birch geographically orients the painting by including a lighthouse signaling the entrance to a harbor on the right side of the canvas at the horizon line with at least ten other vessels, including various types of small sailboats, merchant vessels and an impressive naval ship, entering and leaving this active harbor. Birch cleverly depicts the size of the Pennsylvania by comparison to the other vessels surrounding her. She dwarfs the others so much so that the sails of the schooner immediately beside the Pennsylvania (between the viewer and the Pennsylvania) barely reach up to skim the bottom of the Pennsylvania’s sails. Birch deftly portrays the sun emerging from the clouds to illuminate the lighthouse and the harbor channel to lead the viewer’s eye into the channel while keeping the sea in the foreground richly colored and dark with touches of reflection from the warmly lit sky frosting its rolling waves. To further impress the viewers with the natural beauty of the locale, four dolphins swim in the waves in the foreground. The work is signed in white on the lowest dolphin: “T. Birch.” In a move away from romantic battle scenes, Birch began painting harbor scenes as well. In a tranquil scene of Philadelphia Harbor and the Delaware River where he and his family lived for many years, Birch gives us a glimpse of the human element of life on the waterfront in Philadelphia Harbor (Pl. 3). The artist depicts a pair of men rowing across the harbor, another pair hoisting a sail in their small sailboat at center foreground, and a crew adjusting the sails on the large sloop to the right. He places his largest vessel in the center of the composition to anchor the scene. At the horizon of the work, Birch depicts a steamship heading into Philadelphia, the steamer acting as a sign of the times as steamship power was still relatively new in Birch’s day.4 He shows the built-up waterfront thick with ship masts and brick buildings along the shoreline including the Old Navy Yard. The water is calm with barely a ripple found to interrupt the quiet reflections of the boats on the surface of the sea. The skies are fair and bright to complete the picture of this serene day. In another Philadelphia Harbor scene, Philadelphia Harbor, circa 1840, (Pl. 4), Birch zooms in a bit closer to the shoreline to show identifiable landmarks such as Sparks Shot Tower, the tall brick tower on the left-hand side of the shoreline that was once used to produce 3 Flying the Colors: The Unseen Treasures of Nineteenth-Century American Marine Art by Lauren Pheeney Della Monica ammunition for warfare with the structures of the Old Navy Yard to its right.5 At the Navy Yard is a large ship, probably the U.S.N. Pennsylvania Birch depicted in Plate 2, which was launched in Philadelphia in 1837.6 Closer towards the center of the canvas, the steeple of Philadelphia’s Christ Church peeks out amongst the masts and shorter buildings along the waterfront. However, Birch remains true to his style of marine painting as the subject matter of this work is undoubtedly the marine activity in the harbor. At the right is probably the steamboat Robert Morris built in 1830 quickly heading into port full of passengers creating a bit of a wake in its passage through an otherwise tranquil harbor.7 In the foreground Birch again shows the men of the harbor at labor: a solitary figure rowing out of the harbor in a small skiff and a pair of men, long oars in hand, working at the bow of another skiff laden with crates. Robert Salmon (1775-1856) Robert Salmon (1775-18568) worked out of a rich tradition of European marine painting but added distinctly personal elements to his painting to create a body of work that was both richly historical and contemporary. He added the element of the genre scenes, defined as scenes of everyday life and one of the most important developments in Nineteenth Century American painting in general, to his marine paintings. In Salmon’s work, the genre scenes came in the form of bustling harbors filled with working tradesmen and vessels at various stages of entering and exiting Boston Harbor, his adopted home. His work depicts the bustle and activity of the port in its finely tuned details as well as the composition of his canvases. He specifically excelled at painting the glowing seas and ripples on the waves in a distinctly personal and precise manner. An example of Salmon’s best work both in terms of composition and style is his 1832 A Schooner with a View of Boston Harbor (Pl. 5). 4 Flying the Colors: The Unseen Treasures of Nineteenth-Century American Marine Art by Lauren Pheeney Della Monica In this work, Salmon combines his mastery of a variety of painting techniques and tools to produce a complicated yet serene composition. Salmon places the viewer in the harbor, presumably in another vessel, looking across the water towards the city of Boston with the Boston State House dome in the center of the horizon line to identify the painting’s distinctly Boston locale. The central vessel, a schooner, is shown in portside perspective with the crew busily preparing for a voyage. Salmon places three crew members aloft handling the sails, which drape elegantly across the vessel and reach up towards the fair skies, and an American flag gently rests on the mainsail. Every detail of the rigging is evident and finely painted on this ship as well as the other vessels scattered throughout the harbor. Salmon paints the rippling water in a linear fashion with such attention to detail that we can see the sunlight dancing at the crest of each ripple and reflections of the schooner dancing in the foreground.