"Trawlers leaving Brixham ," by Capr. Roger Fish er. There is a shipshape, workaday look ro rhe vessel in rhe foreground as she leads rhe fl eer our ro sea under clearing skies.
The RSMA Annual Exhibition-1984 by Alex A. Hurst
"Evening in Woolwich Reach ," by Rodn ey J. K. Charman. Th e qui er dignify ofrhe incoming deepwarerman , al/ended by herfussy tug, resonates againsr the throbbing life of the great city with its lights just coming on , and ah ead a Thames barge stands downstream as if in welcome.
Mr. Hurst, veteran seaman and head of the renowned Teredo Press in England, which does so much to keep seafaring discourse and seamanly ways alive, has commented in the past in our pages on the excessive parochialism of the American Society of Marine Artists. Here, while paying tribute to the work of a few British artists of outstanding merit, he expresses some grave reservations as to the present course of the Royal Society of Marine Artists, which served in loco parentis to the American Society. We agree with him on both counts. We'd better. Once when we had a disagreement, Mr. Hurst threatened to have your editor thrown in jail_..!'gaol," as he persists in spelling it-though with unusual conditions that would have made the whole thing more agreeable than it may sound. The 1983 RSMA exhibition had reached a low ebb, most people felt , and it was pleasant , therefore, to find the general standard in 1984 somewhat improved. This was thanks to the efforts of a relatively small number of the ex hibitors . There is little doubt , however, th at the Society is in need of a considerable change in its outlook: a fact which is worth reco rding if o nl y as a warning to its co unterpart in the United States . In the first place, one ex pects marine artists , in a marine art exhibition , to produce pictures of this gen re. One picture which co nfro nted me showed a man , a woman and two children in their bathing costumes aga inst a yellow background w hi ch was presumably mea nt to be sa nd . From the lack of water it might have been th e Sahara , though reference to the
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SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1985