Art

The Greenland Whale Fishery

Joghem de Vries, attributed, 1769

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch had a major whale fishery. Dutch marine artists painted it. These paintings may have been designed for a house or hall. They are in pairs and could fit around tall narrow windows. The setting presents a complete view of the Greenland whale fishery, one that the artist must have seen.

One of the museum’s founders purchased these from the Hearst Collection in California. After his family left Searsport , they were in the whaling business and collected whaling art.

The Greenland Whale Fishery

Joghem de Vries, attributed, 1769

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch had a major whale fishery. Dutch marine artists painted it. These paintings may have been designed for a house or hall. They are in pairs and could fit around tall narrow windows. The setting presents a complete view of the Greenland whale fishery, one that the artist must have seen.

One of the museum’s founders purchased these from the Hearst Collection in California. After his family left Searsport, they were in the whaling business and collected whaling art.

This ship portrait shows the ship B. Aymar, built in Searsport in 1840. She was the first full-rigged ship built in the John Carver yard. There is both a bow and a stern view of the vessel, something common in early ship portraits.

She was commanded by Captain Joshua Slocum in 1873; he sailed her until she was sold in Manila in 1876.

Teupken was an Amsterdam based artist; the Aymar sailed out of New York and must have visited Amsterdam early in her career.

Signature has been cut off, but this painting is attributed to Charles Waldron. The Great Admiral was built in Boston by Robert E. Jackson of East Boston in 1869. She was the most famous ship of the Weld Fleet, having an active life of 37 years. Named for Admiral Farragut and commanded for 12 years by Captain Benjamin Thompson of Winterport, Maine, the Great Admiral foundered in a storm in the Pacific in 1906. Under the Weld ownership, she was commanded by Captain I.N. Jackson, Captain Benjamin Thompson, Captain William Chatfield, and Captain J.F. Rowell.

Captain Philip Broke drilled and trained the crew of the Shannon for seven years. It paid off. He captured the Chesapeake off Boston in a 15 minute fight. Evenly matched, Chesapeake, under Captain James Lawrence for only a few days, had been blockaded in Boston for months and was no match for the British, who got off 362 shots for 158. Buttersworth did not paint Shannon firing, for it would have spoiled the painting. Lawrence was shot in the fight, and died in Halifax, leaving his dying words to the U.S. Navy “Don’t Give Up the Ship.”

Painted in 1996 by marine historian, boatbuilder and artist Paul Stubing, this well-researched watercolor shows a Friendship sloop, commonly called a sloop-boat by most fishermen, off the shore of Eagle Island in the Penobscot Bay about 1898. A lobsterman is hauling a trap from a peapod just behind the sloop-boat. There is a mackerel schooner riding to the wind with her mainsail up in the background, loading herring from a dory that took it from a herring weir. Paul Stubing described the painting:

It is unlikely that Snow, born in 1857, saw this scene in Searsport in 1918, after the days of Searsport shipbuilding were well in the past, although buildings may well have still been in place. By then some yards were active in towns like Belfast, Camden and Rockland but the days of building coasting schooners were gone.

Here the artist shows the schooner partially planked. Smoke comes from a building that could have housed a steam powered saw. Men work at a crane in the foreground which is piled with the usual raw timber that was the stock of the yard.

Busy port scenes were a favorite subject for James Buttersworth. Here, he portrays a classic New York harbor view. On shore, to the left, is Castle Garden (immigration headquarters before Ellis Island) and Fort Williams on Governor's Island from which a salute is being fired. In the midst of a yacht race, a ship of the line is being towed into the harbor. A racing sloop with a prominent owner’s flag, probably belonging to Buttersworth’s paying or potential customer, dominates the foreground. Signed, lower right.

Oil on board.

Liverpool on the River Mersey

Robert Salmon, signed, 1809

William Parr, who later became partners with Robert Bagott, owned these vessels, including the center ship and the brigs Betsy to the left and Phoenix on the right. The world was a dangerous place in 1809, when French and Spanish privateers and naval vessels roamed, ready to snap up unprepared merchant ships. Indeed, Betsy had been taken from the French.

Thomas Buttersworth, Sr., signed, c.1820

Here, Buttersworth portrays the mix of shipping traffic along the English Channel near the coast in a scene evocative of earlier Dutch paintings. The Dutch sloop, also reminiscent of an earlier era, is juxtaposed with an early steam vessel with auxiliary sails. The lug-rigged open boat on the left is in the French or British style, locating the scene perhaps on the Flemish coast or in the Thames estuary. The effect is a stunning picture. At first glance, it could be from the mid-1700s, yet in fact was painted 50-75 years after that.