Showing posts with label boats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boats. Show all posts

Monday, May 18, 2026

Rendering Water

Johann Reger
War Galleys Advancing
1496
woodcut and letterpress
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna


Ignaz Raffalt
Boat Trip after the Rain
1849
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Albert Pinkham Ryder
Homeward Bound
ca. 1883-84
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Georges Seurat
Study of the Seine from La Grande Jatte
1888
oil on panel
Musée Fin-de-Siècle, Brussels

Arthur Rackham
In the Austrian Tyrol
1901
watercolor on paper
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Antoine Ponchin
Houses on the Water at Martigues
ca. 1905
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes

Tom Thomson
A Northern Lake
1914
oil on panel
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Donna Schuster
Garden Reflections
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Williams, Brown & Earle (Philadelphia)
Garden Fountain, Château de Courances
1936
hand-colored lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Angelo Pinto
Icarus
ca. 1944
painted glass
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Arthur Tress
Boy Under Bridge, Queens N.Y.
1970
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Michaele Vollbracht (designer)
Shopping Bag from Bloomingdale's, New York
ca. 1978
screenprint on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Joanne Tod
Chapeau Entaillé
1989
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Hiroshi Sugimoto
Tasman Sea, Ngarupupu
1990
gelatin silver print
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Ed Pien
Pond #6
1993
oil on canvas
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Jack Stuppin
Window Rock
1995
acrylic on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Lucas Samaras
Conflict 23
2003
inkjet print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Large Bad Picture

Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or
some northerly harbor of Labrador,
before he became a schoolteacher
a great uncle painted a big picture.

Receding for miles on either side
into a flushed, still sky
are overhanging pale blue cliffs
hundreds of feet high,

their bases fretted by little arches,
the entrance to caves
running in along the level of a bay
masked by perfect waves.

On the middle of that quiet floor
sits a fleet of small black ships,
square-rigged, sails furled, motionless, 
their spars like burnt match-sticks.

And high above them, over the tall cliffs'
semi-translucent ranks,
are scribbled hundreds of fine black birds
hanging in n's in banks.

One can hear their crying, crying,
the only sound there is
except for occasional sighing
as a large aquatic animal breathes.

In the pink light
the small red sun goes rolling, rolling,
round and round and round at the same height
in perpetual sunset, comprehensive, consoling,

while the ships consider it.
Apparently they have reached their destination.
It would be hard to say what brought them there,
commerce or contemplation.

– Elizabeth Bishop (1946)

Friday, May 15, 2026

Aquatic - II

Thomas Eakins
Study for Swimming with Art Students as Models
1884
albumen print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Thomas Eakins
Swimming
1885
oil on canvas
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Helmuth Macke
Three Bathers
1914
oil on cardboard
Museum Penzberg, Germany

Mette Tronvoll
Untitled
1999
C-print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Johann Nepomuk Schödlberger
Landscape with Bathing Nymphs
ca. 1810-20
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Abraham Rutgers
Landscape with Two Fishermen beside a Road
ca. 1682
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Rudolf Hirth du Frênes
On the Beach
ca. 1880
oil on paper
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Eugène Boudin
Beach Scene
1893
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Louis-Alexandre Dubourg
Strollers on the Jetty at Honfleur
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art Moderne André Malraux, Le Havre

Tristram Hillier
Quantoxhead
1946
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Claude Monet
Rough Water, Étretat
1883
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Max Kurzweil
Seascape in Moonlight
ca. 1900
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Anton Kolig
Narcissus
1920
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Ludwig von Hofmann
Beach at Nieustede
1910
pastel on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Anonymous German Artist
Mermaid
16th century
woodcut
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Clara E. Sipprell
Women in Rowboats
1905
cyanotype
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

As for cities, such as are of late foundation and since the increase of navigation, inasmuch as thy have had since more plenty of riches, have been walled about and built upon the shore, and have taken up isthmi both for merchandise and for the better strength against confiners.  But the old cities, men having been in those times for the most part infested by thieves, are built father up, as well in the islands as in the continent.  For others also that dwelt on the seaside, though not seamen, yet they molested one another with robberies.  And even to these times those people are planted up high in the country.

But these robberies were the exercise especially of the islanders, the Carians and the Phoenicians.  For by them were the greatest part of the islands inhabited, a testimony whereof is this.  The Athenians when in this present war they hallowed the isle of Delos and had digged up the sepulchres of the dead found that more than half of them were Carians, known so to be both by the armour buried with them and also by their manner of burial at this day.  And when Minos his navy was once afloat, navigators had the sea more free.  For he expelled the malefactors out of the islands and in the most of them planted colonies of his own.  By which means they who inhabited the sea-coasts, becoming more addicted to riches, grew more constant to their dwellings, of whom some, grown now rich, compassed their towns about with walls.  For out of desire of gain, the meaner sort underwent servitude with the mighty; and the mighty with their wealth brought the lesser cities into subjection.  And so it came to pass that rising to power, they proceeded afterward to the war against Troy. 

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

Saturday, December 6, 2025

Marine Elements

Willem van de Velde the Younger
Ships off the Coast
1672
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna


Simon Fokke
Rough Water in the Haarlemmermeer
1755
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Johan Christian Dahl
Boats on Beach near Naples
1821
oil on canvas
KODE (Art Museums Complex), Bergen, Norway

John Sell Cotman
Seascape off the Mersey
1835
watercolor and gouache on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Knud Bull
The Wreck of the George the Third
1850
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Rafael Monleón y Torres
Calma en el puerto de Valencia
1875
oil on canvas
Museo de Bellas Artes de Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Albert Pinkham Ryder
Moonlight
1887
oil on panel
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Childe Hassam
Building the schooner Provincetown
1900
oil on canvas
Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama

Anonymous Swiss Printmaker
Zürichsee
ca. 1900
postcard
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Anonymous American Artist
The Sinking of the Titanic
after 1912
oil on glass, with mother-of-pearl collage
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

James Ranalph Jackson
The Holiday
1916
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Henry Billings
Marine Elements
ca. 1936-37
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Tristram Hillier
Le Havre de Grace
1939
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Edward John Hughes
Village Wharf
1956
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Alex Colville
Embarkation
1994
acrylic on panel
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Cyril Hirtle
Untitled (Many Fish)
before 2003
watercolor and ink on board
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

David Levinthal
The Sinking of the Titanic
2014
inkjet print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

from Works and Days

    When gods alike and mortals rose to birth,
A golden race th' immortals form'd on earth
Of many-languag'd men; they liv'd of old,
When Saturn reign'd in heaven – an age of gold.
Like gods they liv'd, with calm untroubled mind,
Free from the toil and anguish of our kind.
Nor sad decrepid age approaching nigh 
Their limbs mishap'd with swoln deformity.
Strangers to ill, they Nature's banquets prov'd,
Rich in Earth's fruits, and of the blest belov'd:
They sank to death, as opiate slumber stole
Soft o'er the sense, and whelm'd the willing soul.
Theirs was each good: the grain-exuberant soil
Pour'd the full harvest, uncompell'd by toil:
The virtuous many dwelt in common blest,
And all unenvying shar'd what all in peace possess'd.

– Hesiod (700 BC), translated by Charles Elton (1812)