To most people it will seem quite natural that British artists should
give much attention to marine painting. The sea plays a very important
part in our national affairs, influences the character of the people,
and affects the political policy of the country, so almost as a matter
of course it has its place among the sources of inspiration for our
native art. Sea painters of the higher rank have come with scarcely an
exception from countries which have an extended coast-line and in which
the seafaring habit has been developed by centuries of maritime
activity--countries in which the use of the sea for purposes of commerce
or communication has been a necessity. Dutch artists have painted the
sea and shipping and incidents in the life of the dwellers on the coast
with skill and distinction; there have been sea painters in Denmark,
Norway, and Sweden, some in France, a few in Italy and Spain; but it is
in the British Isles most of all that the possibilities of marine
painting have been recognized and the pictorial material that the sea
provides has been turned to full account.
No doubt this is partly due to the fact that British art has concerned
itself very greatly with what may be called the physical characteristics
of the country. A considerable proportion of our painters have been
devoted students of nature, and have occupied themselves with records of
British scenery, and of those subtle effects of atmosphere and
illumination which are the product of the variable British climate.
Responsive themselves to the charm of their surroundings, they have
catered for a public which appreciates the beauties of nature and likes
to see them realized pictorially; lovers themselves of the land in which
they live, they have striven to please the many people who are possessed
by a similar sentiment and wish to have about them pictures in which
this sentiment is agreeably reflected. No record of British scenery
could be complete, and no appeal to British sentiment could be
effective, if our artists ignored the wide variety of subjects which the
sea offers them.
For the sea is with us a tradition, and the love of the sea is one of
the strongest of our national instincts. Because we live on an island
the sea is at the same time our protection from those who might seek to
do us harm and our means of communication with the rest of the world; it
safeguards us against dangers to which other less fortunately situated
countries are constantly exposed, and yet it puts us directly in touch
with even the most remote and apparently inaccessible peoples. Therefore
we regard it naturally as a friendly influence in the lives of us all.
But we owe it a debt of gratitude also for the effect it has had upon
our British art. It is from our insular climate, from the mists and
moisture which the sea brings, that those atmospheric qualities come
which make the study of nature in the British Isles such a never-ending
delight. It is the surrounding sea that encourages the rich growth of
our vegetation, and that gives to our landscape its wealth of detail and
its ample variety of colour. As the sea influences the manner of our
national life, so it influences the quality, the sentiment, and the
method of our art, helping us to build up a school which is insular in
its merit and its expression, and national in its feeling and its
intention.
Yet, curiously enough, in the earlier period of British art history the
names of few painters are recorded who perceived the pictorial interest
of the sea or tried to realize its beauties. Indeed, at the beginning no
attention was given to the study of open-air nature; landscape painting
was not attempted seriously, and the study of atmospheric effects was
generally disregarded. The artists of that time occupied themselves
mainly with portraits--digressing occasionally into figure
compositions--and took little account of anything but the purely human
interest in art. They worked for the glorification of their patrons, to
adorn the houses of the great, or to prove themselves good sons of the
Church, not to bring about the conversion of the people who were
insensible to nature’s charm.
It would be scarcely fair, however, to accuse the earlier British
artists of insensibility because they worked in this manner within
circumscribed limits; they only followed, after all, what was the
fashion of the schools in other countries. In Italy, for instance,
during the splendours of the Renaissance, the study of landscape for its
own sake was as little thought of as it was in Great Britain at the time
of the Tudors. Many of the Italian masters introduced landscape
backgrounds in their figure compositions, but it was landscape of a
formal and conventionalized kind, a weaving together of details to form
a pattern which was used merely to fill space or to add something to the
point of the pictured story. It was never landscape seen and set down as
the motive of the painting; at best it was only a sort of still life.
But in Italy at that period the mission of the artist was very exactly
defined, and even if he had been inclined to escape from the limitations
imposed upon his activities, the custom of the time would have been too
strong for him. He was the servant of the great noble and the obedient
assistant of the Church, he decorated palaces, and he painted
altar-pieces, he recorded scenes from ancient or contemporary history,
and incidents in the lives of the saints. Neither the noble nor the
churchman wanted from him studies of Italian scenery, or desired that he
should show how he was impressed by the brightness of sunlight or by the
glory of an evening sky. The severest discouragement would have awaited
him if he had attempted anything so unconventional; he might even have
incurred penalties as a man of unseemly and heterodox opinions.
For a long while British artists worked under restrictions hardly less
rigid. What was demanded of them they supplied, but the demand that they
should show to the public what nature is like was slow in coming. Word
pictures of nature there were in plenty; a chorus of poets extolled her
charm, but no one seemed to perceive that what they found so inspiring
in their verse could be visualized and made apparent by the painters.
When Herrick wrote:
“I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers,
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers”
British artists were looking to Van Dyck as their leader, and were
striving, as he did, to immortalize their contemporaries or to tell in
paint purely human stories. The brooks and blossoms, birds and flowers
did not claim their consideration or provide them with material for
popular canvases, and it did not occur to them to paint the groves and
twilights, the damasked meadows and the pebbly streams, which Herrick
loved so well.
In fact, it was not until the eighteenth century that the representation
of landscape subjects began to be recognized as a legitimate sphere of
artistic activity. Even then what was required was a very dry and
commonplace kind of topographical illustration--a certain number of
people had developed an interest in British scenery and in the
archæological relics which were to be found in different parts of the
country, and accordingly it became the fashion to collect pictures of
famous “views” and of ruined abbeys and other ancient buildings. But in
producing these pictures little scope was allowed to the artist for the
exercise of his imagination or for the expression of any æsthetic
sentiment. The more precise and careful he was in his statement of fact,
the more accurate his paintings were as portraits of the places or
objects chosen, the better were his clients satisfied. He had to do what
photography does now--he had to make a more or less literal diagram of
his subject with as much of the detail as he could contrive to set down
and with as little display as possible of his personal taste or fancy.
However, out of this limited and mechanical beginning grew very quickly
a school of landscape practice which substituted the wider study of
nature for the record of topographical realities. A number of artists
broke away from restrictions by which they felt themselves to be
hampered, and they found a considerable section of the public prepared
to countenance them in their effort to attain freer and more significant
expression. They brought a new spirit into the art of the country, a
spirit of inquiry and investigation, and they taught people to look more
closely at nature’s manifestations and to interest themselves
intelligently in her elusive suggestions. In other words, they destroyed
a convention which had been generally accepted, and in securing freedom
for themselves to follow their personal inclinations towards a more
rational treatment of nature they gained the sympathetic support of the
many art lovers who had discovered how cramping the convention was, and
how seriously it stood in the way of the right kind of development and
progress.
The new school of landscape was deficient neither in enthusiasm nor
energy. Men of marked originality and brilliant capacity rallied to it
in large numbers, and with the vigorous initiative of pioneers in a land
of promise set to work to make their discoveries effective. They wrested
nature’s secrets from her one by one, secrets of colour, secrets of
illumination and light and shade, secrets and mysteries of ever-changing
atmospheric effect. There were still “views” to paint, but instead of
being treated as matters of dry topography they were used as subjects
for pictures in which the painter’s temperamental response to the
inspiration he received was plainly manifested, and in which the
impression made upon him by the motive in its various aspects was
appropriately summed up. In a very short time the British landscape
school became under the stimulus of the new thought and the new methods
the most important in the world, and the most independent and
progressive in its practice.
But, even then, few painters had realized the wonderful pictorial
possibilities of the sea. There were some who attempted marine subjects
and coast scenes but only as occasional diversions from their ordinary
course of study--as illustrations of their capacity to deal with nature
in any phase or mood, or it may be to gain experience in what was to
them a novel kind of material. Probably in the eighteenth century an
excursion to the coast was something of an adventure for men who lived
inland; facilities for travel were very limited, and it was easier for
an artist to record the subjects which were conveniently within his
reach than to struggle against difficulties to reach places remote from
his home. Moreover, his clients were mostly stay-at-home people, too,
who knew the sea only as a sort of vague abstraction, as something they
had heard about, but of which they had no personal knowledge, and
therefore their interest in it was too indefinite to be remunerative to
him. It was more to his advantage to paint the things they knew than to
make them realize what seemed to them strange and surprising.
Anyhow, nearly all the earlier painters of marine subjects were men who
had some particular reason for taking to this line of practice. One of
the first--Charles Brooking, who was born in 1723--was brought up in
Deptford Dockyard, and as a not unnatural consequence acquired
considerable skill in the representation of shipping and naval
incidents. During the latter part of his short life--he died at the age
of thirty-six--he gave some instruction to Dominic Serres, a Frenchman
by birth, who was a foundation member of the Royal Academy and was
appointed to the post of Marine Painter to the King. Serres had been a
sailor, and was captured by an English frigate in the war of 1752 when
he was in command of a trading vessel; he settled in this country, and
with Brooking’s assistance and a good deal of hard work on his own part
became a painter of repute. In his choice of the direction he followed
in his art he was, like Brooking, influenced by his earlier associations
and by the desire to treat pictorially material with which he was
thoroughly conversant.
Another artist of this period who was almost exclusively a marine
painter was Nicholas Pocock, born in 1741. He, too, had been at sea, and
had commanded a sailing vessel before he adopted the profession of
painting. Yet another was John Cleveley, born 1745, who is supposed to
have been the son of a draughtsman in Deptford Dockyard, and who in his
youth held some post there himself; and there was another Cleveley,
Robert by name, born about the same time, who gained distinction by his
pictures of naval engagements. He, again, had had previous experience at
sea. Then there was Clarkson Stanfield, born at Sunderland in 1793, who
went to sea in his boyhood, and was for a while in the Navy, until an
accident cut short his career; his particular place in art was
determined by the knowledge of his subject which he had gained before he
turned to the profession of sea painter. And to the list can be added
George Chambers, born at Whitby in 1803, the son of a seaman, and
himself a sailor when he was not more than ten years old.
That men like these should have specialized in sea painting is not
surprising. It is evident, by their later success as artists, that they
had the faculty of observation and the capacity to visualize their
impressions, and almost as a matter of course they were inclined to put
into a pictorial form the matters with which they were so well
acquainted. The sea had become a part of their lives, and of shipping
they had an exact and technical knowledge; and they were in touch with
people who were no strangers to the sea, and who in consequence demanded
that it should be represented with fidelity and understanding.
Everything combined to make them the leaders in a branch of practice
which requires close and accurate insight, and their works in the early
days of the nature study development set a standard of accomplishment
which was helpful in the highest degree; a standard which might never
have been reached if sea painting had been nothing more than the
diversion of the landsman who now and again went for a sketching trip to
the coast. The marine painters of our modern days who work with
conscience and a love of completeness owe, perhaps, more than they
realize to these predecessors of theirs who established the tradition of
serious effort to get things right, and who built this tradition upon
first-hand knowledge.
But to some extent it is to the example of these specialists that must
also be ascribed the skill in sea painting that, as time went on, was
attained by many of their contemporaries who did not deal
systematically with this class of subject. The habitual landscape
painter, accustomed to fixed forms and effects that followed more or
less regular rules, might easily have drifted into a conventional
representation of the sea if he had not been shown the way to look at it
by the men who knew it intimately, and if works by these men had not
existed to provide him with the means of testing his own achievement.
For his own credit, however, he had to strive to compete with them in
knowledge of the sea, and had to measure an understanding of it acquired
by deliberate and conscious effort against theirs which had been
obtained by prolonged and personal contact; and to uphold his reputation
as a painter of capacity he had to prove that he could grasp the
essentials of whatever type of material he might elect to handle.
Therefore, the adoption of a convention, the inadequacy of which could
have easily been demonstrated, would have been a confession either of
want of conscience or of deficient intelligence, and would have
reflected upon his claim to rank as an artist of distinction.
That is why at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of
the nineteenth the number of men who, without specializing in the
subject, painted the sea with undeniable ability, had become
considerable. By that time artists were moving about much more freely in
search of motives, and many of them made frequent visits to the coast
with the particular intention of mastering the problems of sea painting,
and of studying at first hand phases of nature which were to them
comparatively new. Moreover, the interest taken by the public in sea
pictures had grown in a marked degree, and there was a demand which the
popular artist was called upon to satisfy. So most of the landscape men
alternated regularly between inland views and coast scenes, and painted
both with the same sincerity and the same strength of purpose.
Constable, David Cox, De Wint, Copley Fielding, Edward Duncan, J. S.
Cotman--to quote a few of the more notable names--added important
records of sea and coast subjects to the list of their more memorable
productions; and there was, of course, Turner, who might with justice be
claimed as the greatest of all marine painters despite the fact that his
sea pictures make up only a small proportion of his total achievement.
Turner was supreme because he, and he only, estimated at its full value
the poetry and the majesty of the sea; because he alone could grasp its
immensity and its tragic strength and yet be exquisitely in sympathy
with its smiling serenity and placid calm. Turner saw and understood the
drama of the sea, and by the largeness of his vision and the depth of
his understanding he was enabled to present this drama in all its
varieties of action. But then, Turner had not only “the eye of an
eagle”--as Ruskin said of him--he had, too, the gift of imagination by
which realities are transmuted into poetic suggestion. Accuracy of
detail and plain statement of fact were the foundations on which his art
was built (and no one made more sure of his facts or looked more closely
into details), but the superstructure he erected was designed and
arranged to express his own large conception of his motive as a whole,
and to illustrate the workings of his own emotion. Therefore, when he
painted the sea it was the appeal that his subjects made to his
imagination that directed and established the final result; and how
strong this appeal was can be judged from the amazing beauty and power
of his accomplishment as a marine painter. Although it has been given to
no other artist to rival or approach Turner in mastery of
accomplishment, although it is difficult to believe that there can ever
be another painter who will be able to claim equality with him in the
same sphere of art, the stimulus of Turner’s example must always be
vividly felt by every true student of nature, and especially by every
one who aspires to paint marine subjects in the right manner. For,
certainly, the poetry of the sea and the drama of the sea are among the
most salient of its characteristics, and there is surrounding it an
atmosphere of sentiment that must be sympathetically perceived. A
commonplace and matter-of-fact statement of wave forms would be about as
worthless artistically as an architectural elevation of a mountain
range, and the more coldly and scientifically correct it was the less
would it convey of the spirit of the sea. The frame of mind in which the
painter must assume his task must be akin to that of Thomson when he
wrote:
“Thou, majestic main
A secret world of wonders in thyself!”
and in this world of wonders he must be prepared always to find some new
secret which will deepen his sense of the mystery of the sea and make
him feel that with all his striving he has touched only the fringe of
its romance. At no stage in his study will he be in a position to say
that he has learned enough and that his subject has no more to reveal;
every fresh discovery will open up to him new matters for investigation,
and suggest other lines of thought.
Turner, at all events, never came to the conclusion that his knowledge
of the sea was complete, for to the end of his life he maintained the
freshness and variety of his interpretation. He gave to it, year by
year, a deeper note of sentiment, responding always more directly to the
impression he received, and eliminating everything that did not help in
the attainment of his pictorial purpose. Detail at the last he almost
entirely disregarded, concentrating the whole of his attention upon the
main effect by which temperamentally he was inspired; but the things
essential for the construction of his picture and for making clear the
meaning of his motive he observed with the most scrupulous care. Even in
his slightest and, seemingly, most casual notes of the sea there was the
subtlest accuracy of vision, and there was the truest summing up of the
story that was told by the particular phase of the subject he had chosen
for the exercise or his powers as an interpreter of nature’s message.
Never did he descend to a formula or use a set convention to gain his
dramatic result. It was partly for this reason that he stood so
sublimely apart from his contemporaries; he did not repeat himself,
while they were too often content to follow rules and to do over again
things that they had discovered to be attractive to the public. Yet many
of the artists of Turner’s period were men of distinction and their sea
paintings had satisfying merit and no small measure of inspiration.
Stanfield suggested well the movement and action of the sea and was
sensitive to its atmosphere; Copley Fielding saw and took the
opportunities that the sea offered him for arranging graceful
compositions and charming studies of light and shade, and he, too, had a
sound understanding of wave movement; De Wint and David Cox, both
masterly students of nature, painted the misty subtleties of the coast
with masculine power and with the knowledge that comes only from
prolonged and thoughtful observation; and others not less observant
showed that the pictorial possibilities of the sea had by no means
escaped them. But none of them arrived at Turner’s magnificent disregard
of limitations or approached him in dramatic strength, and certainly
none of them had the courage to abandon, as he did, detailed reality for
the sake of presenting a higher and more impressive truth.
Indeed, that is one of the mysteries of Turner’s genius--that he could
distort facts and leave out apparently essential details and yet make
his realization of nature perfect in its truth--and what is still more
mysterious is that this system of distortion and elimination was not a
matter of convention but a universally applicable principle of practice
and one which in his hands was capable of infinite variation. By an
infallible instinct he grasped instantly the meaning of his subject as a
whole and decided what he should accentuate or omit to make that meaning
clear, and all his devices of technical treatment were as infallibly
directed by an exact understanding of the way in which they could best
be made to serve his end. Paradoxically, he left things out to gain a
greater completeness of result, and he departed from strict correctness
to secure more absolute reality. But all this he did by the aid of an
extraordinary insight into nature’s facts and under the guidance of a
judgment which was never at fault.
That is why Turner’s manner of representing the sea cannot be applied by
lesser men. Without any disparagement of the many able marine painters
who have practised since his time it can safely be said that on none of
them his mantle has fallen. Certainly to none of them has been granted
his rare endowment of intimate vision and profound imagination;
certainly none has possessed that combination of exhaustive knowledge
and perfect confidence which made him so consummately a master of his
craft. There have been in the recent past, there are at work to-day,
artists who have studied the sea in the most sympathetic spirit and
whose seriousness of effort deserves the highest praise, artists whose
accomplishment would be wholly satisfying if Turner had not shown so
brilliantly the greater possibilities of sea painting; but theirs is a
limited and specialized view beside that of their great predecessor. It
is as well, however, that they do not try to do too much. To paint the
abstract drama of the sea in the only way that can be made convincing,
the possession of a temperament is absolutely essential, but this
temperament must be schooled and disciplined by lifelong study or the
drama will degenerate into incredible fantasy. Turner was
temperamentally fitted to attempt the highest flights, and with his
perfect technical equipment nothing was beyond his reach. Other artists
must be content to admire his poetic power without aspiring to rival it.
But, after all, honest, well-educated, serious prose is better than
incoherent poetry, no matter how well-intentioned that may be; and
certainly the prose of many of our modern sea painters is very good
indeed--clear, logical, and distinguished by a true sense of style--and
into much of it comes that touch of poetic feeling that gives charm and
picturesqueness to the descriptive statement.
To illustrate the difference between these two types of sea painting the
work of Henry Moore can appropriately be instanced. He was, next to
Turner, the most learned and accomplished student of marine motives and
the finest exponent of the facts of the sea whom any school has
produced. But beside the dramatic poetry of Turner his art was prose,
fine prose, persuasive and dignified, but never rising into inspired
fancy. In other words, he saw nobly and beautifully, but Turner saw and
imagined as well, and the more he saw the more splendidly did he use his
imagination.
Yet Henry Moore has indisputably his place among the masters because his
art, though not profoundly imaginative, was as able in achievement as it
was accurate in observation. Moreover, he was acutely responsive to the
sentiment of nature, and interpreted her in her many moods with
exquisite discretion. Frank and straightforward as his work always was,
it never lacked the direction of a sympathetic mind; its strength was
controlled by a singularly correct sense of artistic propriety and was
never allowed to degenerate into mere display of executive cleverness.
Certainly Henry Moore was a fine craftsman, and was not hampered by
technical difficulties in the practice of his art; indeed, one of the
most salient characteristics of his pictures, as we see them to-day, is
the confidence of the handling by which they are distinguished.
This confidence, this directness of method, was the outcome of a not
less confident understanding of the material with which he was
accustomed to deal. The things he knew were to him matters of such
complete knowledge that he was able to concentrate himself entirely upon
the pictorial realization of them without having to make experiments or
calculations to prove whether or not his assumptions were correct.
Wisely, too (not having the Turner temperament), he did not aim at
possibilities which he honestly recognized as being beyond his reach.
Facts and realities he could grasp, subtle shades of fact and delicate
variations of reality he could express with discriminating subtlety and
sensitive delicacy, but to conceive a vision in which actual nature
would be turned into a gloriously fanciful abstraction was outside the
range of his personality. So he kept to the path which it was right that
he should tread, and made no excursions into strange places in the
domain of art, proving himself thereby a master of himself as well as of
his art.
We have every reason to be grateful to him for his solid and
well-balanced common sense. Henry Moore as an imitator of Turner,
following in the wake of a leader whom he could never overtake, would
have been a wasted force in art. Henry Moore as a painter true to his
own convictions, striving earnestly to set before us his extraordinarily
intimate view of the sea, has established a standard against which the
achievements of our modern sea painters can be measured most
instructively, and has pointed out the principles on which these
painters must work if they are to justify their effort. Knowledge such
as Turner possessed is by its very vastness incomprehensible to the
ordinary man; but knowledge like that which Henry Moore gathered is
possible to other artists, though to few of them is given his capacity
to express it, and to fewer still his sureness of touch and his command
of executive method.
What is particularly to be learned from Henry Moore’s pictures is the
wide variety of matters which have to be studied by the men who aspire
to paint the sea with a sufficient measure of artistic fitness. There
are, of course, many ways of representing the sea pictorially--as a
background or setting to some nautical incident; as an accessory in a
scene which has humanity for its main interest; as a generalized scheme
of colour or tone; as a decorative motive with conventionalized forms;
or as a poetically indefinite fantasy in which nearly everything is left
to the imagination of the beholder. But the most scholarly and serious
way--Henry Moore’s way--is to analyse and dissect; to account for every
variation in form and every changing gleam of colour; to find the
reasons for each of the many kinds of wave movement; to learn the
connexion between certain conditions of the weather and certain states
of the sea; to know how to produce a sea picture which will be logical
throughout and without contradictions of atmospheric effect which are
calculated to excite the protests of the marine expert who knows his
subject and is not inclined to take artistic licence into
consideration. Henry Moore spared himself none of these exhaustive
preparations and had the technical skill to make the outcome of them
wholly attractive in artistic quality; that is why he ranks as a master
at whose feet it is good for the would-be sea painter to sit in all
humility.
If a series of his pictures is examined it will be seen at once that in
each one some special problem is dealt with and some definite phase of
the sea is taken as the motive. Unthinking people are apt to say that
sea paintings are monotonous because they lack incident and variety of
subject, because they are nothing but waves and sky, but this objection
implies an unobservant habit of mind. Henry Moore did not repeat
himself, and among the most personal characteristics of his work was its
breadth of outlook, a breadth of outlook which was developed by his
constant search for fresh impressions. Although he had not had, like
Stanfield or Chambers, a professional connexion with the sea, he was
frequently afloat and always trying to enlarge his experience of his
subject. He had, too, the gift of very rapid technical expression which
enabled him to set down what he saw while the impression was vividly in
his mind, so that his first clear conviction was not modified or
obscured by mechanical causes--by that prolongation of effort which
leads to an ill-assorted mixing of ideas and an indecisive manner of
statement.
This combination of instantaneous apprehension and unhesitating
expression is, indeed, a necessity for the artist who wishes to avoid a
merely conventional rendering of the sea and who is anxious to suggest
properly its really infinite variety. There is so much that must be done
quickly, there are such incessant changes of effect and condition, that
the deliberate worker, thinking slowly and using his appliances
unreadily, is always in danger of being left with his intention
unrealized. He sees something that appeals to him as a good subject and
he begins to study it in all seriousness; but before he has grasped its
meaning, and before he has more than the first few careful touches on
his canvas, the effect that stirred him has gone, and in its place there
is something else that is surprisingly different. No wonder if unable to
keep pace with nature’s elusive tricks he becomes after a while
hopelessly bewildered and gives up the struggle in despair. Possibly,
being a conscientious person, he decides to paint one aspect only of the
sea and to specialize in one type of subject which he can master by long
and laborious practice; or, being less particular, he builds up a pretty
convention which will help him to turn out superficially attractive
things that will please a none too critical public. But in neither way
is the great sea painter made, the painter who can tell the story of the
sea and convey to us its sentiment and its character.
What makes the problems of marine painting so complex is, first of all,
the fact that the sea is never in absolute repose, and therefore its
surface forms are constantly undergoing some degree of change. Another
difficulty is that the sea-water seems to vary in composition and
consistency according to the conditions under which it is viewed; at one
time it is solid, opaque, ponderous, and sombre in colour, and at
another it is light, transparent and full of delicate tints. As it is a
reflecting substance as well as one through which light can pass it
alters in appearance in the most surprising manner under the incidence
of sunlight or in response to the variations in atmospheric effect; and
as it is a moving body it appears to be subject to no laws of
construction and to have no sort of method in its restlessness. Most
people, indeed, would hold that the cynical comment on womankind,
“Toujours femme varie, souvent elle est folle,” could be applied with
particular appropriateness to the sea, so feminine is it in its charming
irresponsibility.
Yet the student of the sea can, if he sets to work in the right way,
discover the sources of its irresponsibility and the reasons for its
lapses into insanity. He can dissect its forms and learn its anatomical
construction, and he can find out what regulates and determines its
movements. He can establish a direct agreement between the apparent
texture of the sea and the bottom over which it flows, as well as
between its surface character and the nature of the weather. And having
dissected and analysed, having investigated and arranged his discoveries
in the proper order, he can solve pictorial problems which ordinary men
would count as puzzles to which there was no key. With this knowledge at
his disposal he would be able, too, to paint pictures which would show
the sea as it is and as it can be, not as an erratic and unaccountable
phenomenon acting contrary to all natural laws, which is the view given
of it by the artists who are incautious enough to paint it without
having learned its ways.
For instance, the painter properly equipped would make the right
distinction, both in colour and wave form, between the deep sea and that
in shallow places; between the transparency of waves breaking on a rocky
coast and those on a sandy beach; between the wave action in a tidal
current moving with or against the wind; or between the seas that are
penned in a narrow channel and those that are running free in wide
spaces. These are elementary matters, perhaps, in the study of marine
painting, but elementary or not they are only too often misapprehended
by the careless observer; and they are typical of a host of others which
are not less likely to become pitfalls for the unwary. Neglect of them
leads to slovenly and unsatisfactory production and to a kind of work
that may be cheaply effective but that has actually no justification for
existence.
One mistake very often made by men who have not carried their studies
far enough is to miss the necessary connexion between the state of the
sea and the accompanying condition of the atmosphere; another is to
paint in a sea picture a sky that is in wrong relation to the wave
movement. Both these errors arise from the failure of the painter to
study his subject as a whole, from his inexperience of what may be
called the technical peculiarities of his material. He has by him a sea
note that seems worth treating on a more ambitious scale, and he finds
in his portfolio a sketch of a sky that composes nicely and is quite
attractive in its general character; so he mixes the two together and
calls the compilation a marine painting. But, really, unless by some
lucky chance the two sketches happened to have been done under similar
weather conditions the picture would be no more true to nature than the
laboured effort of the “art” photographer who prints his sky from one
negative and his landscape from another; or who grafts a studio-lighted
figure on to a background photographed out of doors.
The sea painter must, for the credit of art, keep clear of such silly
tricks and mechanical devices. He must be logical both in his
observations and in the use he makes of them, and he must be consistent
in his statement of the facts before him. A picture in which the sea
suggests half a gale while the sky is one which would be seen only in a
dead calm is an obvious absurdity, and it would be not less ridiculous
to paint the full colours of sunlight in an atmosphere of mist and
driving rain; yet these things are done by artists from whom more regard
for truth is to be expected. Lapses of this sort cannot be forgiven;
they imply a shirking of responsibility that is beyond excuse, and a
failure to grasp the first principles of nature study. They would never
occur if the men who paint the sea would regard it as a living reality
which responds to the influence of its surroundings and varies its
appearance as circumstances dictate, and if they would recognize that it
has its own anatomical structure by which its movements are controlled.
There is a reason for everything it does and there is a way of
accounting for every aspect it assumes, but the reason has to be sought
for, and the way to necessary knowledge must be pursued with painstaking
effort. There is no place in marine painting for the man who wants to
take things easily.
But any one who is interested in executive problems which demand
concentrated attention and sustained investigation will find plenty to
tax his fullest energies--problems of drawing, of colour and tone
management, of imitative suggestion, and of technical application. As an
example of a complex motive which would present a series of difficulties
a picture might be imagined of the sea washing in among rocks, some of
which are submerged while others stand up above the surface, the water
clear and transparent and neither smooth nor much agitated. Through the
water the objects beneath would be clearly seen and the surface would
reflect the rocks above and catch gleams of light from the sky, and the
movement of the small waves swinging towards the rocks and rebounding
from them, and eddying over the shallow places, would make a pattern of
lines and planes set at all sorts of angles. To realize such a subject
adequately an almost perfect balance of observation would be needed. Too
much attention given to the under-water details would destroy the
suggestion of the surface; too much concentration on the surface lights
and reflections would make the water seem opaque; exaggeration of the
lines and planes of the ripples would diminish the breadth of effect and
alter the character of the subject. The painter must perceive that this
problem has many sides, and that each one must receive exactly its right
amount of consideration if the pictorial solution is to be correct; if
he has to make a compromise with reality the most subtle judgment will
be required of him to create an illusion that will look like truth.
To multiply such examples would be easy, for there is no phase of sea
painting in which difficulties do not abound. It is difficult to paint a
breaking wave, to preserve its architectural quality of design and its
appearance of massive strength, and yet to show that it is a moving and
momentary thing disappearing as quickly as it is formed. It is difficult
to represent the confusion of a stormy sea, churned into foam and
tossing in the wildest turmoil, and yet to make intelligible the order
and regularity of its movement and the right sequence of its changing
forms. It is as difficult to render the smoothness of calm, quiet water
without making it look solid and opaque, dull and lifeless, as it is to
suggest the liveliness of a breezy day without lapsing into meaningless
repetition and restless pattern-making. Every successful sea picture is
a difficulty overcome and a problem solved, and every successful sea
painter is a man who has struggled earnestly with intractable material
and has built his achievement on a foundation of laboriously acquired
knowledge. Probably that is why there have been comparatively few great
sea painters; it is certainly a reason why the few who can be accounted
great should be regarded as masters of the highest rank with places of
distinction in the history of art.
Next in importance to the study of the sea itself comes the acquisition
of a capacity to paint shipping, the two do not necessarily go
together. There have been many capable painters of the sea who could not
draw a ship and did not know how to set it on the water; and there have
been many men with an accurate technical knowledge of shipping whose
treatment of the sea from the pictorial point of view left much to be
desired. As a matter of fact, a ship provides one of the severest tests
of draughtsmanship; it is such a complicated collection of lines and
curves and so hard to put in proper perspective that it makes
exceptional demands upon the artist’s powers. Moreover, every ship has
its own individuality, a character peculiar to itself, and to express
this individuality as much analytical effort is needed as to draw the
right distinction between the differing types of humanity. Details which
to the unprofessional eye seem of no significance must be carefully
attended to because each one of them contributes something to the sum
total of fact and helps to make the character intelligible, and to slur
over these details is a fatal mistake. A ship treated conventionally and
without personal insight is as uninspiring pictorially as a portrait
which has missed all the little human characteristics which made the
sitter interesting.
The painter of shipping has, too, a very wide field to cover. He has to
range from the yacht to the warship, from the liner to the rusty,
weather-beaten tramp; he has to show how the lively movement of the
sailing ship differs from the steady, methodical progression of the
steamer; he has to understand the behaviour of all sorts of craft under
all sorts of weather conditions; and to make this varied assortment of
knowledge intelligible in his pictures he has to depend almost entirely
upon his powers of drawing. By bad drawing he will not only miss the
specific character of the ship, but he will also fail to explain the
part that this ship is intended to play in the story which his picture
seeks to tell. The introduction of shipping into a painting of the sea
is usually to increase the dramatic strength of the subject, but if
through technical inefficiency the added incident does not carry
conviction or explain itself properly the point of the drama is obscured
rather than accentuated.
Unfortunately it is rather too easy to produce instances of the wrong
handling of ships in sea pictures, which otherwise are quite acceptable,
and of imperfect understanding of the action of vessels afloat. Some of
the earlier masters who had studied the sea and knew its ways well made
curious mistakes when they brought in a ship as a central feature in
their composition. They would fairly often poise a craft of much
solidity and considerable tonnage on the very crest of a wave where
there was certainly not a sufficient body of water to support it; or
they would put a ship so close to a gently shelving beach that there was
an obvious and immediate danger of its running aground, a position that
would alarm even the boldest of sailors. They were as a rule cheerfully
ignorant of the intricacies of rigging and of the set of sails, and
occasionally they seemed to credit a ship with an uncanny power of
progressing at full speed in the teeth of a stiff breeze. All this
resulted from inadequate study of technicalities that a seafaring man
would treat as a matter of course--from insufficient acquaintance with
things that, after all, scarcely came within the scope of a landsman’s
experience.
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.
Clearly, in marine painting there is no lack of opportunities. In its
various branches it offers to the artist room for the most divergent
activities and it allows him a spacious field for the exercise of his
powers. If he aspires to conquer difficulties they are there in plenty,
difficulties which have to be met with courage and handled with
discretion. If he is content with simple tasks there are many which will
occupy him agreeably and be well worth working out. If he is a serious
student of nature’s manifestations they are set before him in profusion,
and the whole array of her mysteries is paraded for his instruction; and
if humanity is his subject, all the actors in the drama of sea life are
there to inspire him with their doings and to stir his imagination with
the record of their achievements. Always the contact with the sea brings
him something fresh that leads him into new trains of thought and
suggests to him new ways of applying his technical skill; but always the
demand is made upon him that he should put forth the whole of his effort
to reach and maintain the highest standard of artistic practice. There
is no place in marine painting for the man who, taking the line of least
resistance, seeks by compromise and convention to gloss over his want of
knowledge and tries by superficial cleverness of handling to divert
attention from the incompleteness of his analysis. An artist of this
sort had better let the sea alone and choose something simpler and less
abounding with pitfalls for his inexperience.