MARINE ART LIVES slow-moving hull coming upon astonished cows and flights of water fowl, beating back home against the afternoon southwesterly, in time to get back for a silent movie at the Town Hall in Sea Cliff, or digging clams to cook up a mess with a pal on a sandbank ... simple, non-plastic pleasures that seemed very important at the time and do today! In the early 1930s, at the beginning of my art career, I left these things to do a little studying and a lot of living in Europe. These were the days of Hitler's rantings and a general slide of old institutions in Europe's storied capitals but we hardly noticed that-one could live so well on $50 a month, or like a king on $100! It was during this period that I was exposed to the great museums of France, Italy and Germany and the glories of magnificent sculpture and architecture: the whole of Europe seemed a living museum with an attitude of preservation unlike our own of "tear down and build a bigger and better one." After Europe my old yen for the sea got the better of me and I stepped up a peg to ocean racing-Bermuda, Halifax, Gibson Island, the Vineyardall races designed to give one a healthy respect for the sea! And the distinct feeling at times, during a howling gale 600 miles offshore, that a nice, comfortable living room has its advantages. The fair weather and the foul, closehauled, reefed down battering awesome seas or "running free" with a fair wind-all serve me well as I stand by my easel doing my best to capture some of those moments . The right place at the right time, I believe, has happened to me in ways to shape my destiny. While peddling my wares in downtown New York I bumped into the owner of a large steamship company. He asked me to pay him a visit concerning some art work. This turned out to be an assignment to research and paint his forebear's sailing ships. I worked from a list of twentythree ships of Danish origin, making necessary (I was nothing loathe) a trip to that country to do my research. Back to Europe! This time to put to use some of the museums that had given me such pleasure in my early career. If you have ever done research you really have to master for your own use, you will appreciate the hours of searching through file cards, the deciphering -of flimsy letters and tattered logbooksthe picture you are after comes out bit by bit, but there is joy in the discoveries, and in fitting them together to your own understanding. The museums were won10
derfully cooperative and I managed to get background of the periods and creditable likenesses of all the ships. The one ingredient missing was the ships themselves, and the visual demonstration of life in those days-in other words, seeing and doing exhibits. There is an excitement in that, and a learning, not obtained from only pictures on a wall. After my return to the United States via an overloaded aircraft with more than my weight in drawings, books, photographs, logbooks, artifacts, etc . I spent the following two or three years composing and painting ship portraits. Mystic Seaport asked me to exhibit the paintings. And it was at this exhibit that I had the good fortune to meet Peter Stanford. At this time Peter had formed the concept of the South Street Seaport and we were to have a long and friendly relationship working on that. We felt the project should be basically formed by volunteers, the people. With their participation and enthusiasm and hard work, we would save a waterfront portion of the City of New York and make the public aware of the fact that New York would not exist were it not for trade created by the magnificent sailing ships of the past. The project would include all the shops and activities of the maritime trades-coffee, tea, ship chandlers, sea food restaurants . These things are now happening as part of this heroic effort, and the result is a true bonanza for the lover of the sea. My most recent project (I seem to go from project to project) has been to research and paint the story of American whaling, portraying the Charles W. Morgan and her many successful voyages. The painting of this series is a prime example of the relationship of the marine painter to the maritime museum. One can walk the decks of the Morgan at Mystic, study her gear, dream of her in combat with the magnificent mammals of the deep she hunted, and then walk over cobbled streets to see it all depicted. The test of the artist is-how well! In that, none of us can do any more than the best that is in us. For those readers who have had the courage to stay with me this long in this essay, let me make the observation that it is well I make my livelihood from the brush and not the pen. The rainbow I have followed has brought me rewards that it is a great privilege to share, even by talking about it as I have attempted to do here.
GEORGE F. CAMPBELL, Member of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects, comes at ships as a portraitist, with a fine rage to get at the truth of their hull forms and rig. Born in 1915 on the banks of the River Mersey, he spent his boyhood holidays and weekends working as a hand aboard a cutter-rigged fishing smack in Liverpool Bay. The
FRED FREEMAN comes near living everything he paints or draws, and does so to the hilt, intensely. Born in Boston, raised in Maine, he met his wife Katie in New Jersey where she started out modeling for artists as he was starting out to be an artist, studying under Henry Rankin Poore, a noted painter of wildlife. They were married in 1927 and later moved to Essex, Connecticut, where the Freemans live today. Today Fred's paintings hang in The Mariners Museum, Virginia, the Smithsonian Institution and elsewhere. But his heart remains in the seaport village of Essex, and his work is wrapped up in the ex-