MARINEART
"Preble' s Boys," oil, 12 x 15 inches.
"General Quarters, USS Constitution by Moonlight," oil on canvas, 22 x 24 inches.
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Robert Sticker: Robert Sticker was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1922and learned an early interest in art from his father, a writer and graphic artist. Not only did the elder Sticker guide Robert in the use of his watercolor books at an early age, but he introduced the boy to oils when he was only six years old. The Stickers summered on Staten Island and then moved there permanently when Robert was still in grade school. Both the pleasure boats and the huge ocean-going ships fascinated the fledgling artist, so it is not surprising that his early start in art should be combined with a special interest in maritime subjects. But, for most of his young life, art was merely a pleasant pastime. After high school, Bob went to Brooklyn College to study accounting and economics, but lost interest in those subjects and left school to take a job in the oil industry. During World War II, Bob served as a Navy pilot in huge flying boats on patrol in the Pacific. Those long, monotonous flights taught him the many moods of sea and sky. After the war, he returned to his career in the oil business and resumed his study of economics with night courses at New York ' s City College. Once again, he found those studies unrewarding and transferred to the Art Students League. When his company reorganized, a substantial severance allowance enabled him to study at the Art Students League full time. Bob recalls his work under the direction of the teacher Frank Reilly: "He had made an extensive study of the history of teaching [art] and . . . what the Old Masters had known about the art of drawing, anatomy and materials. He put together a school within a school-a complete education in fine art. "I've found that most of the books on art are simply the story of techniques. But the real secret is observing things and understanding what you ' re observing. That was the magic of Frank Reilly's course. He pointed out just what you were seeing. He gave homework assignments to demonstrate the meaning of his lectures. For instance, he would have us do what he called the "twenty-four head problem." We would take a piece of canvas boardanddrawtwenty-fourheads on it, all the same size and shape. Then we started out painting the first head in normal light, the second in low light, the third in extremely bright light, the fourth in yellow light, the fifth in red light and so on-right through all of the possible SEA HISTORY 69, SPRING 1994