MARINE ART
on the
20thAnnuaf Mystic Intemationaf by J. Russell Jinishian
Dutch artist Fritz Goosen represents the present-day incarnation ofthe roots of modern marine art, which many believe began in Holland in the 1600s. Today, the Dutch Society ofMarine Artists is a vibrant organization reflecting the nation that, through its network ofdikes and canals, lives shoulder-to-shoulder with the sea. Goosen impressionist style suits the gentleness ofthese tjalks gamming side-by-side in the characteristically gray Dutch waters. (''Tjalks Becalmed," by Fritz Goosen; oil; 28" x 20")
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In January 1977 the Marine Art Committee ofthe National Maritime Historical Society held a marine art exhibition at the National Boat Show in New York. This pioneering effort included works by Charles Lundgren and John Stobart, as well as Oswald L. Brett, Carl Evers, Mark Greene,JohnMecray and William G. Muller. Lundgren and Stobart went on to become the founding president and vice president ofthe American Society of Marine Artists, incorporated as a separate entity a year later. A special issue of Sea History was devoted to the show, under the banner ''Marine Art Lives!" This inaugurated Sea History's continuing Marine Art section. America's leading maritime museum took up the beat from there, as Russell Jinishian, former director of Mystic Maritime Gallery, recounts below, reviewing the 20th Annual Mystic International. Although the inaugural exhibition, and the efforts ofthe American Society of Marine Artists, had shown that ''Marine Art Lives!" in considerable variety, the genre was practically an underground movement, confined to a scattering of buffs and a few wealthy collectors. Public recognition was almost nonexistent. f we could roll the tapes back twenty years, to take a look at the marine art scene in 1979 , what we'd see would be vas tly different than the world that presents itself to us today. Back then, in the massive wake of accomplishments of the British artist Montague Dawson, there were literally only a handful of artists, among them Anton Otto Fischer and Charles Robert Patterson, who dedicated themselves to pursuing the rigors of marine art full time. Following the formation of the American Society of Marine Artists, under the auspices of the National Maritime Historical Society, Mystic Seaport had begun a con-
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SEA HISTORY 91, WINTER 1999-2000