An artist who knew the vessels he painted firsthand, Baltimore artist Otto Muhlenfeld has captured the Great Lakes Steam Tug CALUMET in a colorful, working profile. Her American Ensign outreaches her name pennant, and a gilded pilot house eagle sits atop the unusual 360-cabin structure of her bridge. Her black funnel reaches skyward, through an atmosphere and a sea that have characteristics of folk art, always desirable in early American original artworks.

Launched in 1892 out of Milwaukee, CALUMET carries the name of the Chicago River off Lake Erie, and served primarily along the entirety of the Erie Canal route, from the lakes to Buffalo and on down the Hudson to Albany, making all points of the Atlantic Ocean possible. Later in 1913 an entire class of tugboats would carry her name and a similar design, and prove popular enough for a Calumet Shipyard to specialize in their construction.

Shown early in her career, CALUMET is painted in deep tones, and the 62.55 gross ton vessel was a capable worker, assisting vessels of all sorts. Muhlenfeld painted a series of portraits, many of them tugs, in this era, directly commissioned to portray the ships. The artist employs a level of drafting skills in the depiction of the ship’s line and detail.

A stalwart ship of the British Royal Navy, a Third Rate Warship with a steeped fighting beak platform and approximately 74 guns sits at anchor within a river estuary, waiting for either orders or opportunity to serve the Crown. The War with the American Colonies had ended four years earlier, and the U.S. was just signing the Constitution the year this work was painted. The artist Pocock himself served aboard a similar ship during some of his Royal Navy career, and may well have known this specific ship depicted. The scene is far more than a simple ship portrait, with a complete composition of small boat activity, men on the headland shore and a beautiful yet subtle atmosphere and waterway.

Works available by Pocock, and for that matter any of the First and Second generations of British Marine painters are extremely rare in public markets, and have been steadily gaining appreciation as fine art works and investments for years. The strength of this single painting, with its detail and excellent overall composition makes it apparent why such works have earned an improved standing within art collectors of all fields. This is one to possess, treasure and enjoy, as the people of Pocock’s time would have certainly done as well.

One of three late 19th-Century steel-hulled barques built directly for the shipping company of Lang & Fulton of Greenock, Scotland, the EAST AFRICAN was a familiar sight in both Liverpool and Melbourne, alongside her near-identical older sister, EAST INDIAN, and their larger, younger brother ship, AUSTRALIAN.

The 252'5" L x 39'B x 22'5"D vessel was built in 1895 by the Robert Duncan & Co. Shipyard of Liverpool. Duncan is renown as one of the premier engineers of his time, and had already made several innovations in locomotive and agricultural mechanization before acquiring his marine boiler shop in 1880, and by 1882 his ship-building firm employed more than 450 men. Jacobsen has portrayed the ship in her early beauty, white-hulled with a peek of Greenock Red of her lower hull in view, matching the waterline. She is full-sailed, with six courses on the fore-and -main, rigged expertly.

The Liverpool-to-Australia Trade route was one of the last hurrahs for the sailing trades, carrying British goods and passengers and bringing back primarily loads of wool, along with items from countries throughout the Orient. Many ships were manned by crews less numerous than had plied the seas on the Clipper trade routes. A knowledge of mechanics became standard fare alongside seamanship and navigation. EAST AFRICAN was built to carry a large cargo, yet made remarkably competent sailing times year in and out. EAST AFRICAN would continue on service, selling to Norwegian interests in 1911, still afloat when the World War I broke out.

A Downeaster runs under a full spread of sail and a rosy, luminous afternoon sky in this telling marine narrative painting by Duncan Gleason. Suggestive of the coastal Pacific Ocean with which Gleason was so familiar as an artist and a yachtsman, the rolling swells indicate that the large merchant ship is running somewhat perpendicular to the tide, with her sails aligned to catch the onshore wind. Unconcerned with the direction of the wind, except for the dispersion of its smoke exhaust, a large commercial freighter makes headway in the other direction further out to sea.

Gleason chose to paint many specific subjects; the important works he did of the U.S.S. CONSTITUTION come readily to mind, and the many famous yacht portraits he did for Hollywood elite sailors, such as Errol Flynn, Charlie Champlain and Cecil B. DeMille. He also purposely did a smaller array of different types of ships in action, concerned primarily with the emotion and setting of these ships and not so much their identities. This is one such great example. The massive, atmospheric white cloud bank is alight with color from the reflective sun, in contrasting complement to the deep blues and broad strokes of Gleason’s wet brush throughout the ocean. The sailing ship itself pops in the angle of the full light and obscures some in deeper shadows, giving depth and movement both a presence within the painting.

Painted after a Mediterranean encounter from direct information provided by English officers who were present, the Dutch Master Willem van de Velde Jr. composed a view of naval battle straight from the Algiers coast. Barbary ships and armed sailors assault a vessel of the British Admiralty, with the “haze of battle” obscuring some of the heroic and desperate actions of participants.

One of the exceptionally rare original works of this specific nautical combat, it became a popular 16th and 17th Century subject with his British patrons, to the point were van de Velde painted this scene more than once, with the earliest large original painting residing in the collection of the Earl of Midleton, England. This is the known second such painting, attributed directly to the artist’s studio, with its significant provenance. It is interesting that in this period the artist strove to show humanity on both sides of the naval battle, as men in dire situations attempt to assist each other, amid the chaos and fire.

Barbary corsairs preyed upon foreign ships throughout the 17th and 18th Centuries, right up to the successful British assault on Algiers by Lord Exmouth’s squadron in August, 1816. Internal European conflicts kept the Barbary pirates from fully facing a reprisal until after Napoleon’s downfall. Painted for members of the aristocracy, Willem van de Velde the Younger’s artistic efforts echo through the finest collections and museums still today.

A stalwart American ship clearing the Delaware headed for Honolulu with a load of coal, this broadside ship portrait by Alexander Charles Stuart is of the Ship GATHERER. In her maiden year of service, the Bath, Maine-built Downeaster went to New Orleans with hay, took a load of cotton from there to Liverpool, and crossed to collect the coal in Philadelphia before heading to Hawaii. She’d make 8 Cape Horn voyages, averaging about 129 days, a profitable and fast sailing Downeaster, and yet still record one of the bloodiest voyages in merchant maritime history.

In this portrait, A.C. Stuart shows the large wooden vessel as built by Albert Hathorn, a 1,509 ton Downeaster especially constructed for the Cape Horn Trade. Measuring 208’1” x 40’2” x 24’3”, she’d sell to Jacob Jensen at San Francisco in 1888, serve 17 years on the Pacific rigged as a bark, and then transfer to New York interests to carry lumber from Puget Sound to New York in 1905, and become a towed barge, eventually lost off the coast of Virginia in 1909 with 2,400 tons of coal.

While her first captains, Joseph and George Thompson, earned GATHERER a good reputation as a fast sailer especially for such a large square-rigger, reaching 15½ knots and 350 miles a day from Honolulu back to the Columbia River in 1874, a voyage from Antwerp to Wilmington, California in 1881 would darken her name. Under Captain John Sparks and Chief Mate Charlie Watts the ship earned an unsavory reputation of “Hell Ship” and whispered title of “The Bloody Gatherer”, and eventually Watts six years in Folsom Prison for cruelty on the high seas. While the dark names stuck, she proved to be far more of a success than this one tragic voyage. Stuart has captured her early glory.