The Newcastle Ships "Lord Gambier", "Lady Jane" and "GrenvilleBay" Whaling in Company in the Arctic
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Description
Accession Number: 2001.100.4713 Creator: John Wilson Carmichael (British, 1800-1868) Summary: The scene is a rare contemporaneous close-up depiction of a whaleboat in pursuit, with carefully delineated portraits of the entire whaling fleet of the northern port of Newcastle-on-Tyne (artist J.W. Carmichael’s hometown) — a modest total of three ships. And like El Greco’s Burial of the Count of Orgaz, Rembrandt’s Night Watch, and the German painter Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware (in which fellow artist Worthington Whittredge stands in for the Father of His Country), for staffing the whaleboat Carmichael is supposed to have painted portraits of actual friends and dignitaries he knew personally. In 19th-century England, when the economic mainstay was seaborne trade and the military backbone was the Royal Navy, there were literally dozens of highly accomplished marine painters. Carmichael was one of the best and among the best regarded. Herman Melville would likely have appreciated the action-packed aspects of this picture, as most British whaling scenes are preternaturally serene. Literature: Tony Barrow, “The North-East Coast Whale Fishery 1750-1850 (Ph.D. thesis, Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic, 1989); “The Newcastle Whaling Trade.” Mariners Mirror 75:3, 1989, 231-240; “The Decline of British Whaling in Arctic Canada, 1820-1850: A Case Study of Newcastle upon Tyne,” The Northern Mariner / Le Marin du Nord 8:4, 1998, 35-54; The Whaling Trade of North-east England (University of Sunderland Press, 2001). Title: [Newcastle Whaling Fleet.] Full title: The Newcastle Ships Lord Gambier, Lady Jane and GrenvilleBay Whaling in Company in the Arctic. Date: circa 1835 Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 42 x 63 inches (106.7 x 160 cm) General Information about the New Bedford Whaling Museum is available at: http://www.whalingmuseum.org" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.whalingmuseum.org For information on obtaining reproduction rights or purchasing prints go to: http://www.whalingmuseum.org/explore/collections/rights-usage" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.whalingmuseum.org/explore/collections/rights-usage Or contact the New Bedford Whaling Museum Photo Archives at: 508-997-0046 ext.207 photoresearch@whalingmuseum.org -
Owner
New Bedford Whaling Museum -
Source
Flickr (Flickr) -
License
What does this mean? All Rights Reserved (Seek permission to reuse)
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Further information
Link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/29575093@N05/10950211566/
Resource type: Image
Added by: Simon Cotterill
Last modified: 4 years, 10 months ago
Viewed: 617 times
Picture Taken: 2013-11-19T15:30:23 -
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