Some Marine Art I Like

Just wanted to highlight a few nice paintings I came across recently. No lessons or points to make -- just interesting or lovely images to look at.

First is this pretty, idealized Sinhalese outrigger, from Bjorn Landstrom's THE QUEST FOR INDIA. (I've cited Landstrom's wonderful boat paintings previously, here.) The artist's choice of a very low perspective does a nice job emphasizing the main hull's slenderness and rocker, and the shadows and reflections on the wet sand are so nicely rendered.

Next, from the same book, is a fleet of Chinese oceangoing ships like those on which Marco Polo took the first stage of his voyage home from China some time before the year 1295. The design of the tumblehome is fascinating.

Finally, Egyptian boats from an album of images by Victorian artist and traveler Edward Lear. The images in the album are available as prints from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England. Thanks to Heather Hernandez of the Maritime Compass blog for pointing out this fine resource.

Brazilian Canoe Art by Benedito Calixto

Sad times in Brazil, with firm evidence of the Airbus crash just emerging. But Brazilian correspondent Silvio Antunha sends information about an artist who documented the wonderful dugout canoes of his country. Benedito Calixto (1853-1927) was Silvio's grand-uncle on his mother's side. Silvio sent several pertinent links, all in Portuguese, but well worth checking out even if, like me, you are afflicted by "American's Disease" and can't do anything but English.
http://br.geocities.com/benedicto_calixto/pagina_marinhas.htm
http://www.novomilenio.inf.br/santos/calixt45.htm
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedito_Calixto

The first of the links above, from which I borrowed the painting at the top of this post, has some formatting problems, but if you move your cursor carefully along the right-hand column of thumbnails, you'll eventually find the links to larger images. (No problems with the left-hand column.) The image of the artist himself, below, is from the Wikipedia site.


Silvio points out that the artist's name translates as Sacred Goblet (i.e., Holy Grail?).

I've written about Brazilian dugouts previously, mostly with Silvio's valuable input. This link will bring them all up. If you want still more, there's some great stuff on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8yHb43wjzE&NR=1 Dugout regatta sailing action: these things seem to behave beautifully in a chop, and seem surprisingly forgiving of "bad" technique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow11ZqvMWEM Mainly a slide show with some nice images of dugout construction. The image that appears around 1:25 shows some of the nicest lines I've ever seen on a dugout.

Benson's Dhows

American marine artist John Prentiss Benson (1865-1947), younger brother of the renowned American Impressionist painter Frank Benson, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, lived later in Kittery, Maine, and perhaps naturally spent most of his creative efforts documenting the boats and ships of his home waters and, by extension, the western tradition. A lovely new book from Baker Marine Publications, John Prentiss Benson: American Marine Artist, includes more than one hundred color plates of the artist's work, and I recommend a look to anyone with a general interest in marine art in general, or the western boat/ship tradition.

Untitled -- Lateen Rigged Dhows (ca. 1940), oil on board, John Prentiss Benson

For our purposes, the book includes just one painting of an "indigenous" boat, which I'm reproducing here with permission of co-author and Benson descendant Nick Baker. Although the non-western subject matter isn't typical Benson, the style is very much so: beautifully rendered water and sky in a somewhat Impressionistic style, combined with convincingly rendered boats in a superbly well-balanced composition.

I expect this book will introduce the not-so-very-well-known artist to a larger audience. He deserves it. For more on the artist and his work, see the authors' website.