July Issue 1999
From Ship to Shore: Marine Paintings at Mint Museum
From the myth of Moby Dick and the heroics of Commodore Perry to the devastation of Hurricane Hazel and the confrontation of Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, Americans have always been captivated by the oceans that border it and the ships that transport them. It's in the blood. The continent's earliest population arrived by crossing the sea, whether as ancient Egyptian mariners, as some speculate, or migrants taking the Bering Strait end-around. Centuries later, this enormous land of bounty was colonized and brought into the world economic stream via the great ships of Europe.
To this day, American expressions are peppered with nautical terms - Bill Clinton rode the political waves; Hugh McColl navigated Bank of America through a series of mergers; Tom Glavine sailed a fastball; CBS' 60 Minutes is anchored atop the ratings. Katharine Lee Bates wrote the praises of America the Beautiful from "sea to shining sea" in 1893 while Grant Hill takes the ball "coast to coast" heading into the new millennium.
The sailing vessels of the 17th through 19th centuries were instruments of global economy, transportation and physical power. From Ship to Shore: Marine Paintings presents two centuries of Amencan maritime paintings and ship portraiture. The exhibition is on display at Charlotte, NC's Mint Museum of Art from July 24 through Dec. 5, sponsored by the Mint Museum Auxiliary and Scott Jaguar. The 67 works, from the collection of the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH, portray various themes and artistic movements that parallel the evolution of our country. Subjects include the wealth of young America's merchant class, sailing vessels as icons of power, scenes of immigrants arriving on the shores of a new homeland, the leisure activities of coastal life, the sea as a destructive and powerful force and the coast as a serene and meditative place of unmatched beauty.
"The American obsession with the sea serves as a necessary complement to our obsession with the landscape," stated Todd Smith, Mint Curator of American Art. "Artists have not only chronicled this obsession, but have actively sought to direct this interest. From colonial days to the present, the sea has provided inspiration, escape, refuge and adventure and this exhibition presents these myriad uses in aesthetic form."
The harbor towns of early New England grew into centers of commerce and industry as depicted by Thomas Birch's Ship Houqua (Whaling) and Duncan McFarlane's merchant ship Alice Couce. Merchant traders were among the first of the nation's new class of self-made wealth.
Early American ship portraiture followed the Dutch tradition of a broadside view, accurately and painstakingly detailed. By the mid 19th century, ship portraiture paid homage to evolving engineering that enabled faster trans-oceanic travel and signified human triumph over nature. The prow of James E. Butterworth's Ship Valparaiso slides through the water with full sails and streaming flags, illustrating the record-breaking speed of clipper ships. A similar pride of achievement is evident in Antonio Jacobsen's paintings of the next generation of ships - the steamers Navahoe and Kroonland.
Marine paintings went from stoic, meticulous documentation to a staging of dramatic action as seen in Robert Swain Gifford's Cliff Scene, Grand Manan in which fishermen ply their trade while battling storm-whipped whitecaps. Humanity versus nature was a prevalent theme in literature and the arts in the later half of the 19th century. The sea as a destructive, precarious force is captured by Edward Moran in New Castle on the Delaware, where high winds, pounding waves and jutting reefs threaten a ship seeking the safety of harbor in a storm.
Painters figuratively disembarked from ship to shore as artists of the Hudson River School, and later the luminists, presented seascapes of the American shoreline wilderness as a sublime encounter with the natural world.
Artists reveled in the immensity and drama of America's northeastern shore. Exhibition examples include the mist-shrouded, sheer cliffs of Land's End, Cornwell by William Trost Richards and the striking interaction of light and clouds in Joseph H. Boston's Silver Moonlight. Ships became mere silhouettes to the spectacular sunset of James Hamilton's From Sail to Stream, a work whose power is the nostalgia it inspires.
Marine paintings reflected America's interest at the turn of the 20th century. The middle class sought waterfront retreats to escape the congestion of large cities. Poetic, romantic and idyllic became vogue as reflected by Alfred Thompson Bircher's The Landing, Bailey Island, Maine.
Nature itself became a background setting for the introspective figurative paintings of William Glackens, George Grosz and Augustus Vincent Tack in the early 20th century. Tack's impressionist work Seaside Scene provides a solitary escape for the female figure strolling among the colorful vegetation of a seaside cliff.
Coastal life continued to provide inspiration with the dawn of modernism as seen in Thomas Hart Benton's Chilmark, Stuart Davis' cubist Gloucester Harbor and the active, kinetic rendering of New York City's harbor in Reginald Marsh's The Normandie.
From Ship to Shore: Marine Painting is a visual chronology
of American attitudes toward our oceans and waterways. The exhibition
also provides a unique study opportunity of American artistic
development.
Todd Smith, Mint Curator of American Art, will present a slide
lecture on the subjects and painting styles presented in the exhibition
From Ship to Shore: Marine Painting on Sun., Sept. 26 at
3 pm.
For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery
listings or call the Museum at 704/337-2000.
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