British Seascapes By Malcolm Cormack Curator of Paintings Yale Center for British Art
The Yale Center for British Art held an exhibition last winter and spring of forty-nine seascapes from the Paul Mellon Collection illustrating the development of British marine painting. The whole sweep of a sea/aring nation's experience with the sea over three centuries is expressed in this exhibition, which tells us much of a developing culture, and of how man saw the medium he ventured in so greatly in this period. Mr. Cormack's memorable essay written for the exhibition is reprinted here with the permission of the Center. Willem van de Ve/de, the Elder (16ll-1693), "Armed Men Going on Board Ships and Galleys on a Rocky Coast," ca. 1680. From early in his career Willem van de Ve/de the Elder made paintings such as this known as grisailles. His method, which had been used in the sixteenth century, was to draw with pen and brush in monochrome on a white prepared surface on either panel or canvas and the effect is something like a highly worked engraving. Because of their size, however, such paintings were probably not intended for use by printmakers and became wirh van de Ve/de independent works in rheir own rig hr.
Seascapes are normally considered as part of landscape painting. They are supposed to engage the artist in the same problems of painting light and of atmosphere as he finds in landscapes, only compounded by the difficulty of rendering the luminescent effects of water. From the beginning, however, roughly at the end of the sixteenth century, seascapes became a specialized genre with conventions of their own. As the Netherlandish artists had led the way in the development of landscape, so they also led in the formation of different styles of seascapes, such as quiet estuary
Peter Monamy (ca. 1670-1749), "The Opening of the First Eddystone Lighthouse in 1698, "ca. 1703. The two royal yachrs are lying becalmed near the lighthouse and a flagship is becalmed in the background. Begun in 1696, the Eddystone lighthouse, off Plymourh, was built by Henry Winstanley and began working for the first time on November 14, 1698. It was swept away with Winstanley in it in the Great Storm of November 1703.
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SEA HISTORY, FALL 1978