Marine Painting

      “The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”

Vincent van Gogh

PhotographyPhotography is a process, activity and art of creating still

or moving pictures by recording radiation on a sensitive medium, such as a film, or an electronic sensor. Photography has many uses for business, science, art

and pleasure.

The word "photography" comes from the Greek “phos”

- "light" + “graphis” - "stylus", "paintbrush“; or “graphê” - "representation by means of lines" or

"drawing", together meaning "drawing with light." Traditionally, the products of photography have been

called negatives and photographs, commonly shortened to photos.

Photography as a usable process goes back to the 1820s with the development of chemical photography.

Photography has such a long meaning with complicated words and terms…

These pictures are just photos that differ greatly from paintings because the latter render the mass and volume of the object, give the feeling of

texture and awaken in us sensations of spiritual kind.

It is nowadays when we have all these tools for catching the images of the surrounding beauties we may forget that these are only snapshots of

nature; real masterpieces exposing the true forces of nature and presenting above all the truth of the scenery a painter beheld date back to

much more earlier periods of art etymology.

In this work let’s follow the history of creating marine paintings according to the following criteria:

• painter’s nationality

• trend of art

• vision of the sea power

John Singleton Copley John Singleton Copley 1738 - 18151738 - 1815

- an American painter, born presumably in Boston, Massachusetts

- famous for his portrait paintings of important figures in colonial New England, depicting in particular middle-class subjects. His paintings were innovative in their tendency to depict artifacts relating to these individuals' lives

- “Watson and the Shark” is the1778 oil-on-canvas painting. It depicts the rescue of Brook Watson from a shark attack in Havana, Cuba

- The original of three versions by Copley is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

John Singleton Copley

“Watson and the Shark” 1778

Winslow Homer Winslow Homer 1836 - 19101836 - 1910

- an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects

- considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art

- was a magazine illustrator depicting rural gaieties; then he painted sailors and their women battling with the elements; at last, he saw only the inhabited ocean, lashed by tremendous winds, tearing at the land

- began painting in oils without almost instruction when he was 27, and in watercolours at the age of 38; still, became one of the most brilliant water-colourists the world has known

The painting depicts a Negro, menaced by high seas, sharks, and a waterspout, stretched out in his disabled boat, helpless and resigned.

““Like the waves that toss him, he is an insignificant product of nature’s laws. His Like the waves that toss him, he is an insignificant product of nature’s laws. His death, like the breaking of a wave, will be forgotten before the spray falls.”death, like the breaking of a wave, will be forgotten before the spray falls.”

Winslow Homer “The Gulf Stream”

Winslow Homer

“Sunlight on the Coast”

Theodore Gericault Theodore Gericault 1791 –18241791 –1824

- one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement

- important French painter and lithographer

- known for the canvas “The Raft of the Medusa” and other paintings

“The Raft of the Medusa” (1819)

• the most significant and most ambitious work

• depicts the aftermath of a contemporary French shipwreck in which the captain had left the crew and passengers to die

• a bridge between the styles of neo-classicism and romanticism

• fuses many influences: Michelangelo, Antoine-Jean Gros, Henry Fusely, John Singleton Copley

Theodore Gericault “The Raft of the Medusa”

Claude Monet 1840 – 1926Claude Monet 1840 – 1926

- a founder of French impressionist painting and the leader of the Impressionist School

- the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting

- considered Light always to be “the principal person”

- depicted the same subject under different conditions of light

- decorative arrangement of the elements

- landscapes in bright sunlight

- the term Impressionism is derived from the title of this painting “Impression, Sunrise” (1872 – 1873)

- vibrations of light

- radiant colours laid side by side in small broken touches of brush

Claude Monet

“Impression, Sunrise”

Claude Monet “Argenteuil”

Joseph Mallord William Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner

1775 – 18371775 – 1837

- British Romantic painter

- phenomenal visual memory

- particularly notable for his marine paintings

- life-long absorption with the sea

- constant observation and thorough knowledge of wave forms

- one of Turner’s grandest creations

- vindicates the painter as a draughtsman of human beings

- all figures are living individuals

- unity of composition is gained by the concentration of light masses and the waves

“Calais Pier”

“The Slave Ship”

- the forces of nature which punish the guilty are represented by the violent power of the sea and the

strange sea creatures

- is admired by the use of colour and the way in which sea and sky merge around the distant ship

- in the lower foreground hands of enslaved Africans

can be seen still shackled

“Chichester Canal”

“A Disaster at Sea”

“Turner is the artist who could most stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature…"

John Ruskin

- warm colour scheme

- serenity of the subject matter

- peaceful water forces

- horizon counterbalances the other objects

“The Battle of Trafalgar” 1824

“The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to Be Broken Up” 1838

Caspar David Friedrich 1774 – 1840

-19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important of the movement

- primary interest was the contemplation of nature

-symbolic and anti-classical works convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world

- best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins

- sets the human element in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes

- often didn’t know what he would paint; he waited for the moment of inspiration, which occasionally came in his dreams

"What the newer landscape artists see in a circle of a hundred degrees in Nature they press together unmercifully into an angle of vision of only forty-five degrees. And furthermore, what is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer.”

Caspar David Friedrich

This scene has been described as "a stunning composition of near

and distant forms in an Arctic image“

“Wanderer above the Sea of Fog”

- the human element is set in diminished perspective amid

expansive landscapes

“The Sea of Ice”

Ivan Aivazovsky 1817 – 1900

- the most famous Russian seascape painter

- spent his childhood in poverty

- painted more than 6,000 seascapes and a large group of large paintings glorifying the Russian navy

- spent much money for charity, especially for his native town

- opened in Feodosia the first School of Arts (in 1865), then the Art Gallery (in 1889)

- a member of Academies of Stuttgart, Florence, Rome and Amsterdam

“View of Reval”

He failed to draw landscapes, could not draw a man that’s why one can behold the

true devotion to the marine power

“Battle of Chesma”

“The Ninth Wave” - the marinist’s most impressive and well-known work

- depicts a sea after a night storm and the people facing death in attempt to save themselves from the wrecked ship

- warm tones suggestive of the future survival of the people

- absolute technical perfection

“Moonlight Seascape with Shipwreck”

Evolved his own method of

depicting the motion of

the sea – from memory,

without preliminary

sketches, limiting himself

to rough pencil outlines

“Fishermen on the Shore”

“Brig “Mercury” Attacked by Two Turkish Ships”