AMERICAN SEASCAPES: LANE, BUTTERSWORTH, BARD

AMERICAN SEASCAPES: LANE, BUTTERSWORTH, BARD

by Libby Clay

"Meditation and water are wedded forever," says Ishmael in Melville's Moby Dick.  The sea, and later the ships that sailed her, have always held a fascination for us; in art, this has manifested itself in the genre of the seascape, first developed by the Dutch and the English. Four American seascapes in MAG's collection remind us that the American experience has from the beginning been inextricably linked to the sea.

Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865) was one of the ablest of the "harbor view" painters.  The "Golden State" Enters New York Harbor, 1854, shows American space within a particular American harbor.  We see "The Golden State," sails set, majestically occupying the place of honor in the painting.  We sense not only the romance of the high seas, but also another sensation. By confining the fleet of ships in the harbor, Lane calms our fears of the vastness of the sea; the sea here is under control.

Lane was born in Gloucester, the son of a sail maker.  He had little formal artistic training, but painted intuitively.  He was apprenticed to a lithographer for a time, and that may be the source of his command of drawing.  He understood naval architecture and painted ships with confidence and clarity.

Early in his career, Lane tended to use impasto to emphasize the power of the waves.  By 1854 he was beginning to apply his paint more thinly; looking closely, you can see the twill canvas showing through the paint.  Of interest is the small boat in the right foreground.  At first glance, three of the men seem to be rowing. But look again, for the oars are tipped precariously, and the men are leaning over the gunwale, retrieving something—perhaps a fishing net. The boat in the left foreground, stern toward us, makes a nice juxtaposition.  By giving us these small foreground boats, Lane is including the shore world, our world, in the marine world.  Also visible are a steamboat and what may be a steam yacht.  Thus the artist bridges the age of sail and the age of steam.

Two paintings by James E. Buttersworth (1817-1894) evoke strong emotions.  The tragic Fleetwing Loses Six Men Overboard during the Trans-Atlantic Race of December, 1866, depicts the terrible power of the sea.  The moon emerging from the heavy cloud-cover casts its white light on the waves breaking over the starboard rail—the waves that will wash six men to their destiny.  The gray-green waves are a Buttersworth trademark—one of them makes an S-shaped sweep toward the unfortunate men, as if to emphasize the inexorable flow of the sea.

The Clipper Ship "Flying Cloud" off the Needles, Isle of Wight, shows the most beloved of the famed clipper ships.  The low horizon line serves to silhouette the ship and emphasize the fact that she is sailing into bad water.  The small boat in the right foreground is probably coming to pilot her to safety.  The men on board may have come from the houses that can be seen midway up on the right. Buttersworth's understanding of rigging and the setting of sails under way was unrivaled, and he matched his understanding with careful drawings.

The swift clipper ships had a glorious but brief life.  They were replaced by steamships, which used a more reliable propellant than the wind.  James Bard (1816-1897), painter of Steamship James Fisk, Jr., is acknowledged as the best of the steamship painters. He worked largely in lower Manhattan, near the docks, but is best known for his river views of steamboats, seen from the port side as a strong horizontal.  Bard took great care in measuring the vessels he painted, but he often overlooked consistency of scale and proportion.  This, combined with his flat patterning and bright arbitrary coloring, places him on the edge of primitive painting.

It is paradoxical that the very notion of seascape implies the imposition of order and perspective upon that which is by definition formless and shapeless.  Nevertheless, seascape taps a shared cultural experience and speaks to our "inner selves."

In addition to using MAG's marine paintings to complement the ongoing China Trade exhibition, they can also be connected to the sternboard, folk art (with Bard), View of the Delaware Water Gap, the Di-Polar Girls, Homer's studio, and Bard’s whiplash banners with Paley's ribbons on Convergence.

Sources:  Stein, Roger B., Seascape and the American Imagination; Wilmerding, John, A History of American Marine Painting.