Twentieth-Century and Modern Art
Wadsworth’s dazzle ships in dry dock at Liverpool. Ravilious’s HMS Glorious in the Arctic, painted from the destroyer escorting her, shortly before she was sunk. Hopper’s catboat off Cape Cod, Dufy at Cowes, Lichtenstein’s submarine. The century that painted ships in new ways. Many of these works are still in copyright, and we show you where to see them.
This chapter of Ships in Paintings holds 67 works. For each one you will find the artist and, wherever the records allow, the date and where the original is kept; then what the ship brings to the picture, and the real ship behind it when there is one. See all 1,331 works on one page.
Marea can build any of these ships as a scale model, with the maximum detail the scale permits, finished to be inspected. We can build her as the artist saw her: the same rig, the same sails set, the same colours. It isn’t a copy of a painting. It’s the ship, stepping out of it.
This database was put together by Ai Refloat™, Marea’s own artificial intelligence, from the records of museums, maritime archives and published sources. Ai Refloat is still young & like any teenager, it can be a little volatile and unpredictable at times, but above all, it is learning fast. So this list may well contain mistakes and we welcome the input of everyone who knows these paintings, photographs and ships better than we do: listening, correcting and learning is one of the many ways we work towards perfection in this craft.
When no free image of a work exists, we show instead the museum or the place where the original can be seen.
Have you spotted a mistake? Tell us which painting, photograph or ship, and we will amend it accordingly. Tell us here
The works
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A sailing boat drawn up on the shore at Saint-Tropez Unnamed
Luxe, Calme et Volupté, 1904
Artist Henri Matisse (1869 to 1954)
Where to see it Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Medium Oil on canvas
Matisse painted this in 1904 after a summer at Saint-Tropez working beside the Neo-Impressionists Signac and Cross, and it is considered the starting point of Fauvism. Bathers picnic on the shore of the bay; beside them a small boat rests with its mast rising like a stroke of colour, the one upright that ties earth, sea and sky together. The title comes from Baudelaire's poem L'Invitation au voyage, an invitation to a voyage, so the boat quietly carries the whole idea of the picture. Signac bought it, and Raoul Dufy, seeing it at the Salon des Indépendants in 1905, turned towards Fauvism.
The vessels A small sailing boat drawn up on the shore of the bay; the painting does not identify her.
Sources Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Fishing boats in the harbour of Collioure Unnamed
Boats in the Harbour of Collioure (Bateaux dans le port de Collioure), 1905
Artist André Derain (1880 to 1954)
Where to see it Gabriele and Werner Merzbacher Collection, on permanent loan to the Kunsthaus Zürich (MB 0018)
Medium Oil on canvas
Derain and his older friend Matisse spent the summer of 1905 at Collioure in the Pyrénées-Orientales, painting the same boats and beaches, and when their pictures were shown at the Salon d'Automne that autumn a critic called them fauves, wild beasts. Here the fishing boats lie drawn up on a red beach and moored in the bay, fishermen among them, all laid down in unmixed reds, blues, yellows and greens. Gauguin's saturated colour strongly influenced Derain at Collioure that year. The boats were the everyday furniture of a fishing town; in his hands they became the manifesto of a new way of seeing.
The vessels Small sailing fishing boats of Collioure, drawn up on the beach and moored in the bay; none is identified.
Sources collection.kunsthaus.ch · Wikimedia Commons · Wikidata · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Fishing and sailing boats in the harbour of Collioure Unnamed
The Open Window, Collioure, 1905
Artist Henri Matisse (1869 to 1954)
Where to see it National Gallery of Art, Washington (Collection of Mrs. and Mr. John Hay Whitney)
Medium Oil on canvas
In 1905 Matisse and Derain worked together at Collioure in the Pyrénées-Orientales, and when their pictures were shown at the Salon d'Automne that year the critic Louis Vauxcelles called the painters fauves, wild beasts. This is the view from Matisse's window over the harbour: pots of flowers, open doors, and beyond them sailing boats with tall masts on water painted in pinks and blues. The boats are the reason to look out, small bright shapes rocking in a harbour that has become pure colour.
The vessels Sailing boats in the harbour of Collioure, seen from above; the painting does not identify them.
Sources Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Steamers and sailing barges in the Pool of London Unnamed
The Pool of London, 1906
Artist André Derain (1880 to 1954)
Where to see it Tate, London (N06030)
Medium Oil on canvas
The dealer Ambroise Vollard commissioned Derain to paint a series of views of London, and in 1906 he painted the Pool of London with the silhouette of Tower Bridge across the Thames behind. Instead of fog, he brought Fauve colour: a steamer with a red funnel, barges and rowing boats crowd the foreground, and the working river becomes blocks of blue, red, orange and green. The ships jostle on water that is anything but grey. It is the port of London seen by a Frenchman who refused to paint it sad.
The vessels Steamers, barges and small boats working in the Pool of London below Tower Bridge; none is identified.
Sources Tate · Wikipedia (FR)
Twentieth-century art · Painting
River barges and steamers in Lübeck harbour Unnamed
The Harbour in Lübeck, 1907
Artist Edvard Munch (1863 to 1944)
Where to see it Kunsthaus Zürich (1946/0002)
Medium Oil on canvas
Munch knew Lübeck through the collector Max Linde, one of his patrons, in whose garden there he painted Rodin's Thinker in 1907. That year he signed this view of the harbour on the Trave, looking down over a rooftop onto the water. He reduces the scene to bold strokes of colour: long dark-hulled vessels and a small steamer moored along the quay, a yellow boat in the foreground, trees and houses beyond. The vessels become blocks of colour, and a working port turns into a direct, vivid picture. It passed through the Berlin dealer Paul Cassirer to the collector Curt Glaser before reaching Zurich.
The vessels Unnamed river craft and a small steamer of the kind that worked the Trave at Lübeck; the painting does not identify them.
Sources collection.kunsthaus.ch · Wikimedia Commons · Wikidata · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A harbour launch in the port of Hamburg Unnamed
Vedette in Hamburg (Vedette à Hambourg), 1909
Artist Albert Marquet (1875 to 1947)
Where to see it Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (1983.7.9)
Medium Oil on canvas
Marquet spent the first months of 1909 in Hamburg, and cold, rain and snow did not stop him painting and drawing the great port. A vedette is a small harbour launch, and here one, green-hulled with a black funnel, crosses the broad ochre water while tugs trail smoke behind her and sailing ships lie moored beyond. In the corner the bow of a boat flies the black, white and red flag of the German Empire. Marquet's gift was to simplify: a few dark outlines, restrained colour and a mastery of grey northern light.
The vessels A small harbour launch working among the tugs and sailing ships of Hamburg; none is identified.
Sources artgallery.yale.edu · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia (FR)
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A sailing boat under full sail Unnamed
Sailing, 1911
Artist Edward Hopper (1882 to 1967)
Where to see it Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Medium Oil on canvas
This is the first painting Hopper ever sold. It was shown at the Armory Show in 1913 and bought by the businessman Thomas F. Vietor for 250 dollars, and Hopper had painted it over an earlier self-portrait. A small sailing boat drives hard across dark water, her big sails full, the crew huddled low under the boom. Hopper was born in Nyack, a yacht-building centre on the Hudson, and the boat carries both that boyhood river and a young painter's hopes.
The vessels A small two-masted sailing boat, not identified; Hopper grew up in Nyack, a yacht-building centre on the Hudson River.
Sources Wikipedia · Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Painting
RMS Titanic Named ship
Sinking of the Titanic (Der Untergang der Titanic), 1912 to 1913
Artist Max Beckmann (1884 to 1950)
Where to see it Saint Louis Art Museum (840:1983)
Medium Oil on canvas
The young Beckmann answered the disaster of April 1912 with a vast history painting in the manner of nineteenth-century French masters, more than three metres wide. The museum notes that he focused not on the ship but on her lifeboats, placing the distant, brightly lit liner against an iron-red night sky. In the foreground boats list or overturn, and one is full of women and children, a passenger still in her violet evening gown and earrings. Green and blue colouring and faces in the water give it the quality of a nightmare. The ship is small and far away; the human cost is close.
“focused on the lifeboats of the Titanic while placing the distant, brightly lit liner against an iron-red night sky”
The real ship Titanic, the world's largest luxury liner, sank off the coast of Newfoundland on 15 April 1912; of the 2,200 people aboard, 1,507 died.
Sources slam.org · Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Drawing
Nile river steamers serving as hospital boats Unnamed
Nile Steamers Converted into Hospital Boats, c. 1915 to 1918
Artist Frank Henry Mason (1875 to 1965)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART 2843)
Medium Watercolour on paper
A long, narrow watercolour: a large river steamer painted white with big red crosses passes along a river or canal as a hospital ship, two more following in the distance, and on the left a small island with dhows. Mason served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during the war, commanding a motor launch in the North Sea and in Egypt, and here he shows Nile steamers turned to the care of the wounded. It is a gentle picture of war, white hulls gliding past the sails of the old river world.
The vessels Nile river steamers were converted during the First World War to serve as hospital boats, painted white with large red crosses; the individual boats are not identified.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
E-class submarines at Harwich Unnamed
British Mine Laying Submarines, Harwich, 1917
Artist John Lavery (1856 to 1941)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (IWM ART 1259)
Medium Oil on canvas
Lavery was appointed an official artist in the First World War, but ill health and a car crash in a Zeppelin raid kept him from the front, and he stayed in Britain painting boats, aeroplanes and airships. At Harwich in 1917 he found five submarines moored side by side, long dark hulls and conning towers in the pale light, one lettered E51. A sailor in grey overalls paints the foremost boat, patches of red primer on her side, while a line of ships waits in the haze beyond. The deadly boats become a quiet study of harbour routine.
The vessels The E class was the backbone of the Royal Navy's submarine fleet throughout the First World War; later boats displaced 662 tons on the surface and carried a 12-pounder gun and five torpedo tubes, and the last were withdrawn by 1922.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Drawing
HMS King Alfred Named ship
Dazzle Design for HMS King Alfred (HMS Order No. 32, port side), 1917
Artist Norman Wilkinson (1878 to 1971) and the Dazzle Section
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM DAZ 0029 2)
Medium Pencil and gouache on paper
This is dazzle at the source: a working design drawn and painted in 1917 by the Dazzle Section, the unit Wilkinson ran in basement studios at the Royal Academy, where artists devised schemes, tested them on models and prepared construction diagrams. It shows the port side of the armoured cruiser King Alfred, with two details of her gun turrets set above, every word hand-lettered, and it is signed by L. E. Crabbe and by Norman Wilkinson, Lieutenant RNVR. It is half engineering drawing, half modernist abstraction.
The real ship King Alfred was one of four Drake-class armoured cruisers built around 1900, flagship of the China Station from 1906 to 1910. In the First World War she served with the Grand Fleet and on convoy escort, survived a torpedo hit in 1918, and was sold for scrap in 1920.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A convoy of dazzle-painted ships by moonlight Unnamed
Dazzled Ships at Night, 1917 to 1918
Artist Norman Wilkinson (1878 to 1971)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART 4029)
Medium Oil on canvas
The inventor of dazzle painted his own invention at work. A convoy crosses the sea at night: two vessels in the distance on the left, two more in the centre, and the eye struggles to decide where one ship ends and the next begins. The Imperial War Museum's label explains that dazzle was particularly effective in moonlight, making it hard to judge the shape of a vessel, the number of ships and the direction they are moving in. Wilkinson turns a technical claim into a nocturne.
“particularly effective in moonlight”
The vessels Wilkinson proposed dazzle in 1917, the year German submarines sank nearly eight British ships a day in April; his unit at the Royal Academy devised schemes that were painted onto thousands of Allied ships.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
Image: Norman Wilkinson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Drawing
USS Leonidas Named ship
American Submarine Chasers: Depot Ship Leonidas (USA) Leaving Malta, c. 1918
Artist Frank Henry Mason (1875 to 1965)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART 3116)
Medium Watercolour on paper
In 1918 the United States sent small submarine chasers to the Mediterranean, with the old collier and survey ship Leonidas converted to tend them. Mason, who signed this sheet at Malta, catches her leaving harbour past the fortifications, one ship leaving, two following, a larger ship at anchor behind. It is a quiet record of an alliance at sea: an American tender, built at Sunderland twenty years earlier, steaming out of a British island harbour to support the craft guarding the Allied sea lanes against submarines.
The real ship Built as Elizabeth Holland by S. P. Austin and Son at Sunderland in 1897 to 1898, she was bought by the US Navy in 1898 and served as collier, survey ship and, from 1918, tender to two squadrons of submarine chasers, arriving at Corfu on 8 June 1918.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Drawing
A K-class submarine in dazzle camouflage Unnamed
A Camouflaged K Submarine Passing under a Bridge, 1918
Artist Charles Pears (1873 to 1958)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART 637)
Medium Watercolour on toned paper
Pears dated this watercolour January 1918, and it shows one of the strangest warships ever built, a steam-driven submarine, wearing camouflage as it passes under a bridge. The K class were meant to keep up with the battle fleet on the surface, and so many were involved in accidents that they were nicknamed the Kalamity class. Pears gives the long, low hull its patterned coat, a submarine made as hard to read as any dazzle-painted merchantman.
The vessels The K class, designed in 1913, were large steam-propelled submarines intended to operate with the Grand Fleet. Of eighteen built, none was lost to the enemy, but six sank in accidents with significant loss of life.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Print
Dazzle-painted ships in dry dock Unnamed
Camouflaged Ships in Dry Dock ('Dazzle Ships'), 1918
Artist Edward Wadsworth (1889 to 1949)
Where to see it Victoria and Albert Museum, London (E.4139-1920)
Medium Woodcut on Japan paper
The V&A calls Wadsworth one of the key figures of Vorticism, and counts this print among a group inspired by the wartime months he and fellow artists spent at Bristol and Liverpool pioneering painted camouflage. A small upright woodcut, about 20 by 14 centimetres, it shares its subject with the large painting Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool that he was commissioned to paint towards the end of the war. The museum's proof, on Japan paper, is signed in pencil and dated 1918. In a few square inches it shows a modernist style turned into a wartime tool.
The vessels Dazzle was painted on ships at British ports including Liverpool and Bristol, following designs from Wilkinson's unit at the Royal Academy; the ships in this print are not identified.
Sources V&A · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Edward Wadsworth, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Painting
HMS Princess Royal with the First Canadian Contingent convoy Named ship
Canada's Answer, 1918
Artist Norman Wilkinson (1878 to 1971)
Where to see it Canadian War Museum, Ottawa (CWM 19710261-0791)
Medium Oil on canvas
The man who invented dazzle camouflage painted this huge canvas for the Canadian War Memorials: the sailing of Canada's First Contingent, over 31,000 soldiers, to England. The liners had taken men, horses and equipment aboard at Quebec City and formed up with British warships in the Bay of Gaspé, and on the way they were joined by one of the Royal Navy's largest battlecruisers, Princess Royal. Wilkinson puts her in the foreground, grey and enormous, bow wave rising, so that the whole convoy seems to move under her protection. The title says the rest: a nation's reply, told as a line of ships.
The real ship Princess Royal was the second of the two Lion-class battlecruisers, completed in 1913. She fought at Heligoland Bight, Dogger Bank and Jutland, and was sold for scrap in 1922 under the Washington Naval Treaty.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Norman Wilkinson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A North Sea convoy seen from the airship NS 7 Unnamed
A Convoy, North Sea, 1918. From NS 7
Artist John Lavery (1856 to 1941)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART 1257)
Medium Oil on canvas
Lavery, appointed an official artist in the First World War, stayed in Britain and mostly painted boats, aeroplanes and airships. Here we look down from the airship NS 7 past two airmen at the rail, with a third walking out onto the rigging, to a convoy far below on the North Sea, another airship in the distance. The canvas is almost two metres wide, and the ships are tiny: a picture of how the sea war looked to the men watching over it from the sky, and of how small the merchantmen were in all that water.
The vessels A North Sea convoy of 1918 with its escort, watched from the air by airships of the Royal Naval Air Service; the ships are not identified.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A convoy of dazzle-painted ships in the English Channel Unnamed
A Convoy of Dazzled Ships in the Channel, 1918
Artist Norman Wilkinson (1878 to 1971)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART 4030)
Medium Oil on canvas
The daylight companion to Dazzled Ships at Night. By day, the museum notes, the ships are obviously visible; dazzle never aimed to hide them. But from a distance the patterns still confuse the number and outline of the vessels in the convoy, and that was the point: an enemy commander who misjudged a ship's course and speed would take up a poor firing position. Wilkinson, a marine painter before he was a camoufleur, paints a convoy as an argument, a canvas one and a half metres wide proving his idea in open water.
The vessels Merchant convoys crossed the Channel under naval escort from 1917; each ship's dazzle pattern was unique so that classes of ships could not be recognised.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Norman Wilkinson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Drawing
A British convoy of dazzle-painted merchant ships Unnamed
Convoy of Dazzle-Painted Ships, c. 1918
Artist John Everett (1876 to 1949)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (PAI7000)
Medium Pastel
Everett's summer of 1918 in the docks, allowed by the Ministry of Information after years when security rules kept him from sketching outdoors, produced not only ship portraits but this broad pastel of a British convoy, almost nine tenths of a metre wide. Pastel suits dazzle: chalky colour sits on the paper as flatly as the paint sat on the hulls. Royal Museums Greenwich count his dazzle pictures among his most daring works for their composition and modernity, and they were first shown at the Goupil Gallery in London in November 1918.
The vessels British convoys of 1917 and 1918 gathered merchant ships under naval escort against U-boat attack; each ship wore its own dazzle pattern. The ships here are not identified.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Coronado Named ship
A Dazzle Ship (Coronado), c. 1918
Artist John Everett (1876 to 1949)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC4085)
Medium Oil on paper
Wartime security stopped Everett sketching outdoors until the spring of 1918, when the Ministry of Information asked him to record the London river. With a permit in his pocket he spent every day of that summer in the docks, and what drew him most were the ships covered in dazzle. The museum records this one as the Coronado, built in 1915. Royal Museums Greenwich count his dazzle pictures among his most daring works for their composition and modernity, and they were first shown at the Goupil Gallery in November 1918, the month the war ended.
“Everett's dazzle pictures are among his most daring works for their sense of composition and modernity.”
The real ship Coronado was a steamer built in 1915, according to the museum record; like thousands of British merchant ships she was dazzle-painted against U-boat attack. Her later career is not recorded.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Shuna Named ship
A Dazzle Ship (Shuna), 1918
Artist John Everett (1876 to 1949)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC4084)
Medium Oil on cardboard
In the summer of 1918, with a permit from the Ministry of Information, Everett spent every day in the London docks and found there the most modern subject of his career. The Shuna, a steamer built in 1915, lies covered in the dazzle camouflage Norman Wilkinson had developed the year before against the U-boats. Painted in oil on cardboard, the picture treats the camouflage as the real subject: patterns meant to break up a hull at sea become, in the stillness of a dock, a piece of bold design. Everett bequeathed his dazzle paintings to the National Maritime Museum.
The real ship Shuna was a steamer built in 1915, according to the museum record; she wore dazzle camouflage in 1918. Her later career is not recorded.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Drawing
HMS Iron Duke Named ship
HMS Iron Duke under Snow, 1918
Artist Charles Pears (1873 to 1958)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART 643)
Medium Watercolour and chalk on paper
Charles Pears, best known as a marine painter and later the first elected President of the Royal Society of Marine Artists, made this sheet for the Imperial War Museum's naval section and inscribed it Rosyth, January 1918. His subject is Iron Duke, flagship of the Grand Fleet through the war, including at Jutland. He draws her bow on, pushing through a grey-green sea with smoke streaming aft, her bridge and turrets touched with white. A small sheet on brown paper, it carries the cold of a winter spent at sea.
The real ship Iron Duke was laid down at Portsmouth Dockyard on 12 January 1912 and commissioned in March 1914 as flagship of the Home Fleet. She served as flagship of the Grand Fleet during the First World War, including at the Battle of Jutland, and after the war as flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Print
Dazzle-painted ships in the port of Liverpool Unnamed
Liverpool Shipping, 1918
Artist Edward Wadsworth (1889 to 1949)
Where to see it The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2005.470.12)
Medium Woodcut on Japanese paper
Wadsworth came back to England in 1917 to work on Norman Wilkinson's dazzle scheme, based mainly at Liverpool, and while he was there he made drawings and woodcuts of the camouflaged ships. The woodcut suited the subject: hard-edged shapes cut into the block, patterns that break up a form as dazzle broke up a hull at sea. All his Vorticist oil paintings from 1914 to 1918 are lost, so prints like this are how his boldest work is known. Here art and camouflage come close to being the same act.
The vessels Dazzle patterns were painted on thousands of Allied merchant ships from 1917 to make it hard for an enemy to judge their range, speed and heading; Wadsworth supervised the camouflaging of more than 2,000 ships.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the original is kept. Photo: Arad, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
SS Sardinian Named ship
S.S. Sardinian, 1918
Artist John Everett (1876 to 1949)
Where to see it Canadian War Museum, Ottawa (CWM 19710261-0141)
Medium Tempera on paper
Everett shows the old Allan Line steamer Sardinian in First World War dazzle, lying at a quay among cranes, bollards and sacks of cargo. The Canadian War Museum reminds us that she had first carried Canadians to war in South Africa in 1899; now her white hull is slashed with black and blue shapes to spoil a submarine's aim. The picture is a ship portrait turned inside out: the vessel is drawn with care, but her outline is deliberately confused. It records a veteran merchant ship more than forty years after her launch, still at work in a second war.
The real ship Built by Robert Steele and Co. at Greenock for the Allan Line and launched on 3 June 1874, Sardinian sailed mostly from Liverpool or Glasgow to Canada; she survived a coal bunker explosion and fire in 1878, carried Canadian troops to South Africa in 1899, and was scrapped at Bilbao in 1938.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
HMS Superb Named ship
HMS Superb, Flagship of the Commander in Chief, Mediterranean, Leading the British Fleet to Constantinople, November 1918
Artist Frank Henry Mason (1875 to 1965)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART 2613)
Medium Oil on canvas
After the Armistice of Mudros ended the war with the Ottoman Empire, HMS Superb led an Allied squadron into Constantinople on 13 November 1918, and Frank Mason recorded the procession for the Imperial War Museum's Art Section. Mason had been a cadet on the school ship Conway and a marine engineer before he turned painter, and he knew how a line of warships should look. Superb, flagship of the Mediterranean, leads the fleet through coastal waters on a canvas nearly two metres wide. It is a picture of an ending, the ships arriving in peace.
The real ship Superb was one of three Bellerophon-class dreadnoughts, serving almost her whole career with the Home and Grand Fleets and fighting at Jutland in 1916. She became flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet in October 1918, was reduced to reserve in 1919, became a target ship in 1922 and was sold for scrap that year.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Print
RMS Aquitania Named ship
The Transport Aquitania, 1918 to 1919
Artist Arthur Lismer (1885 to 1969)
Where to see it Canadian War Museum, Ottawa (19710261-0928); impression also at the National Gallery of Canada (40745)
Medium Lithograph, ink on wove paper
In wartime Halifax, Lismer, principal of the Victoria School of Art and Design, was inspired by the shipping and naval activity of the port, above all by the dazzle-painted ships, their curved and zigzag patterns meant to mislead U-boats. His work came to the attention of Lord Beaverbrook, who arranged his commission as an official war artist. Here he draws the great Cunarder Aquitania in her wartime role as a transport. She looms bow on over the quay, tugs smoking alongside while men on the wharf haul on her lines. The liner built for luxury has become a machine of war.
The real ship Built by John Brown at Clydebank and launched on 21 April 1913, Aquitania served Cunard from 1914 to 1950; in the First World War she was an auxiliary cruiser, troop transport and hospital ship, and she was the last surviving four-funnelled ocean liner.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikidata · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Merchant ships forming a transatlantic convoy in Bedford Basin, Halifax Unnamed
Convoy in Bedford Basin, 1919
Artist Arthur Lismer (1885 to 1969)
Where to see it Canadian War Museum, Ottawa (19710261-0344)
Medium Oil on canvas
Nearly three metres long, this canvas shows merchant ships forming up in Bedford Basin, near Halifax, for a transatlantic convoy. Halifax was a vital base for the ships bringing food, supplies and people from North America to Britain and Europe, and after losses to U-boats mounted in 1917 the Allies banded merchant ships together under naval escort. Lismer turns that organisation of war into a basin full of dazzle stripes, smoke and bright water. The sea here feels busy and hopeful rather than grim.
The vessels Convoys were introduced in 1917 in response to growing losses to German submarines; merchant ships sailed together with escorting warships, which required careful organisation of arrivals and departures. Dazzle patterns were meant to help protect them from U-boat attack.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A dazzle-painted merchant ship in dry dock at Liverpool Unnamed
Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool, 1919
Artist Edward Wadsworth (1889 to 1949)
Where to see it National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Medium Oil on canvas
Wadsworth had been a Vorticist before the war, and in 1917 Norman Wilkinson brought him back from naval service at Mudros in the Aegean to help transfer dazzle designs onto real hulls, mainly at Liverpool. Towards the end of the war the Canadian War Memorials Fund commissioned this monumental canvas, some ten feet by twelve, shown in London, New York, Toronto and Montreal in 1919. The ship is freshly painted and high and dry, so the picture is less about the sea than about men, ropes and a hull turned into a moving abstract. It is the moment when modern art and naval camouflage became the same thing.
The vessels Dazzle schemes of clashing stripes and angles did not hide a ship but confused U-boat commanders about her type, direction and speed. Wadsworth supervised the camouflaging of over 2,000 ships during the First World War.
Sources Wikipedia · Wikimedia Commons
Image: Edward Wadsworth, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Print
HMCS Grilse Named ship
HMCS Grilse on Convoy Duty, 1919
Artist Arthur Lismer (1885 to 1969)
Where to see it Canadian War Museum, Ottawa (19710261-0357)
Medium Lithograph (ink on wove paper)
Lismer puts us on the deck of Grilse, looking forward along her long, narrow hull, one of her two 12-pounder guns in the foreground and smoke pouring from her funnel. She was a converted yacht, the Winchester, taken into service when Canada, with a weak navy, scrambled for ships and even asked civilians to donate their own. The print catches her destroyer-like shape and her speed as she escorts ships out to sea. It is a picture of improvisation: a pleasure boat doing a warship's job on the edge of the Atlantic.
The real ship Grilse was the yacht Winchester, converted and armed with two 12-pounder guns and a 14-inch torpedo tube; 61.5 metres long and capable of 32 knots, she was often called a torpedo boat. She patrolled the coast and escorted ships out of Halifax, Saint John and Sydney but could not cross the ocean.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Three ships whose courses cross at sea Unnamed
Marine, 1919
Artist Lyonel Feininger (1871 to 1956)
Where to see it Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
Medium Painting
Feininger had a special relationship with ships, and seascapes run as a constant through his whole work; from 1908 to 1921 he spent his summers on the Baltic island of Usedom. This Marine was painted in 1919, the year Walter Gropius called him to Weimar as the first master of the new Bauhaus. In his typical manner it shows three different ships whose paths cross on the sea, broken into the prismatic, overlapping forms in translucent colour that made his name. In December 2022 the Germanisches Nationalmuseum acquired it, the first painting by Feininger to enter its collection.
The vessels Three different ships whose courses cross at sea; the painting does not identify them.
Sources Wikipedia (DE) · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, where the original is kept. Photo: Remi Mathis, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Painting
RMS Mauretania Named ship
Mauretania in Dazzle Paint, 1919
Artist Burnell Poole (1884 to 1933)
Where to see it Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool (1968.184.6)
Medium Oil on canvas
Poole, an American naval artist, photographed the work of US Navy shipyards during the First World War and in 1918 crossed to Britain as naval correspondent for Everybody's Magazine, painting the British fleet. Here the great Cunarder Mauretania, holder of the Blue Riband for twenty years, wears her wartime dazzle. As a troopship she carried around 35,000 American soldiers to Europe, and she escaped the U-boats through her high speed and the seamanship of her crew. The picture is now in the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool, the port from which she sailed on her maiden voyage.
The real ship Built by Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson at Wallsend and launched in 1906, Mauretania took the eastbound Blue Riband in 1907 and the westbound in 1909, holding both for twenty years. She served as troopship and hospital ship in the First World War, returned to Cunard livery in February 1919, and was scrapped at Rosyth in 1935.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
RMS Olympic Named ship
Olympic with Returned Soldiers, 1919
Artist Arthur Lismer (1885 to 1969)
Where to see it Canadian War Museum, Ottawa (CWM 19710261-0001)
Medium Oil on board
In wartime Halifax Lismer was inspired by the port's shipping, and the dazzle-painted ships became his great wartime subject. This small oil on board, dated February 1919, is a study of the troopship Olympic, sister of the Titanic, returning to Halifax with Canadian soldiers home from the war. Her multicoloured dazzle, added in 1917 at the height of the U-boat threat, breaks up the great hull in bands of blue and white, and the busy dockyard of Canada's principal wartime naval base crowds around her. The whole picture reads as relief and homecoming.
The real ship Olympic was the lead ship of the White Star Line's Olympic class, in service from 1911 to 1935. As the troopship HMT Olympic she carried over 200,000 troops, rammed and sank the U-boat U-103 and earned the nickname Old Reliable; withdrawn in 1935, she was scrapped by 1939.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Print
A catboat under sail Unnamed
The Cat Boat, 1922
Artist Edward Hopper (1882 to 1967)
Where to see it The Art Institute of Chicago (1944.153)
Medium Etching on off-white wove paper
Before his paintings sold, Hopper made his name with etchings, and in 1923 he won two prizes for them, the Logan Prize of the Chicago Society of Etchers and the W. A. Bryan Prize. The Cat Boat belongs to this moment, a simple nautical scene among etchings that already carried his later themes. Hopper grew up in Nyack, a yacht-building town on the Hudson, and as a boy carved models of sailboats and dreamed of becoming a naval architect. Seventeen years later a heeling catboat would carry the figures of his painting Ground Swell.
The vessels A catboat is a small sailing boat; the one in Hopper's etching is not identified.
Sources Art Institute of Chicago · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Art Institute of Chicago, where the original is kept. Photo: Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Sailing and fishing vessels moored in a harbour Unnamed
Seaport, 1923
Artist Edward Wadsworth (1889 to 1949)
Where to see it Tate, London (T00497)
Medium Tempera on canvas
After the war Wadsworth came into a fortune on his father's death, walked the south coast through Devon and Dorset, and took up tempera, the medium of the early Renaissance, which he used for the rest of his life. His tempera paintings of calm coastal towns and ports in Britain and France were first exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in 1923, the year of this picture, and The Times found in them an austere and unsentimental beauty. Here moored boats with red and dark hulls lie still in a harbour basin, every mast and line drawn hard and clear, a deliberate return to order after the war.
“an austere and unsentimental beauty”
The vessels The vessels are unidentified small sailing and fishing boats of the kind Wadsworth painted in British and French ports in the early 1920s.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows Tate Britain, London. Photo: Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Boats and ships in the harbour of Genoa at night Unnamed
The Harbor of Genoa, 1927
Artist Max Beckmann (1884 to 1950)
Where to see it Saint Louis Art Museum (843:1983)
Medium Oil on canvas
The Saint Louis Art Museum calls this an atmospheric moonlit scene, a memory of the busy Italian port Beckmann had visited in 1926. He paints it from his balcony ledge, crowded with a vase of flowers, a stringed instrument and a chair draped with a jacket, so that we look past a traveller's belongings to the boats resting in the harbour and two yellow trains puffing into the station below. Near and far are combined in one long view, and the museum sees in it Beckmann's continuing interest in urban and industrial scenes: the port as a machine that never quite sleeps.
“atmospheric moonlit scene is a memory of the busy Italian port of Genoa”
The vessels Unnamed boats and ships at rest in the harbour of Genoa; the painting does not identify them.
Sources slam.org · Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A Breton fishing boat in harbour Unnamed
Boat in Harbour, Brittany, 1929
Artist Christopher Wood (1901 to 1930)
Where to see it Tate St Ives (T00489)
Medium Oil on board
Christopher Wood admired Alfred Wallis, whom he and Ben Nicholson met on a day trip to St Ives in August 1928, and the old sailor's directness marked his painting. Wood's finest works are considered to be those he painted in Brittany in 1929 and on a second trip there in 1930. He claimed that his mother's family were Cornish and that his love of the sea and of boats came from them. Here a fishing boat sits in a Breton harbour, painted with Wallis's flatness and a sophisticated sense of colour. Wood died in August 1930, aged twenty-nine, which makes these Breton boats feel like a farewell.
The vessels A sailing fishing boat of the Breton coast where Wood painted in 1929 and 1930; the boat is not identified.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows Tate St Ives, where the original is kept. Photo: habiloid, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A fishing boat in Dieppe harbour Unnamed
A Fishing Boat in Dieppe Harbour, 1929
Artist Christopher Wood (1901 to 1930)
Where to see it Tate Britain, London (T07799)
Medium Oil on canvas
Wood painted this fishing boat at Dieppe in 1929, the year of his first Breton pictures, which are counted among his finest. She lies moored against the quay, nets hung from her mast, with the white cliffs and the tall houses of the town behind. Aberdeen Art Gallery holds a drawing of a fishing boat at Dieppe from the same period, showing how he worked from sketches into paint. Wood admired Alfred Wallis, and the boat is drawn with that clarity but set in colours of real sophistication. A year later the young painter was dead.
The vessels A sailing fishing boat of the Channel port of Dieppe, her nets hung to dry; the boat is not identified.
Sources Tate · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Image: Christopher Wood; photo Sailko, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Print
SS L'Atlantique Named ship
L'Atlantique (poster), 1931
Artist A. M. Cassandre (1901 to 1968)
Medium Poster
Cassandre, best known for his travel posters, made this one in 1931 for L'Atlantique, which on her completion that year was the largest, fastest and most luxurious liner on the route between Europe and South America. It stands in the list of his notable posters beside Nord Express, Étoile du Nord and, later, Normandie. The image outlived the ship: in January 1933 a fire broke out off Guernsey, killed nineteen of her crew and gutted her, and she never sailed again. The poster keeps her as she was meant to be seen.
The real ship Built by Penhoët at Saint-Nazaire, launched on 15 April 1930 and completed on 7 September 1931, L'Atlantique was 223 metres long and built with a shallow draught for the Río de la Plata. She burned on 4 January 1933 and was broken up at Port Glasgow from 1936.
Sources Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists.
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A ship painted from memory Unnamed
The Blue Ship, c. 1934
Artist Alfred Wallis (1855 to 1942)
Where to see it Tate St Ives (T00291)
Medium Oil on board on wood
Wallis took up painting at seventy, after his wife died, as he later told Ben Nicholson, for company. He painted mostly on cardboard torn from packing boxes, with the ship's paint he insisted on buying locally, ignored perspective and made each thing as big as it was important. Nicholson, who with Christopher Wood met him in 1928, said that to Wallis his paintings were never paintings but actual events. The Blue Ship is in the collection of Tate, whose St Ives gallery stands near the beach his grave overlooks. Here the ship itself is the event, set on the sea like a remembered fact.
“to Wallis, his paintings were never ‘paintings’ but actual events”
The vessels Wallis painted the world of sail and steam he had known, which was being replaced by vessels with diesel engines; the ship is a remembered type rather than a portrait of a named vessel.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows Tate St Ives, where the original is kept. Photo: habiloid, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Racing yachts at Cowes Week off the Royal Yacht Squadron Unnamed
Regatta at Cowes, 1934
Artist Raoul Dufy (1877 to 1953)
Where to see it National Gallery of Art, Washington (1970.17.30)
Medium Oil on canvas
Dufy was born in Le Havre, and after Matisse's Luxe, Calme et Volupté, seen at the Salon des Indépendants in 1905, directed him towards Fauvism, colour became his language. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he painted the races at Cowes several times, and the most famous of those pictures is this one in Washington. Cowes Week, held every August on the Solent since 1826, is one of the longest running regular regattas in the world. Dufy lets the yachts, flags and spectators dance, the whole regatta turned into a celebration of wind and colour.
The vessels Racing yachts at Cowes Week, held each August on the Solent between southern England and the Isle of Wight since 1826; the yachts are not identified.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Gallery of Art, Washington, where the original is kept. Photo: AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A sloop reaching past a lighthouse on Cape Cod Unnamed
The Long Leg, 1935
Artist Edward Hopper (1882 to 1967)
Where to see it The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California (83.8.25)
Medium Oil on canvas
Hopper's seascapes fall into three groups: rocks, sea and beach grass; lighthouses and farmhouses; and sailing boats. The Long Leg brings two of them together in a nearly all-blue picture with the simplest of elements: a white sail leaning into the wind and a lighthouse with its keeper's house on a low sandy point. It is full of fair weather and strong light, yet a sense of isolation runs through it, as through all his sea pictures. The long reach of the title becomes a picture of solitude, a single boat with the whole bay to itself.
The vessels A small gaff-rigged sailing boat of the Cape Cod coast, where the Hoppers spent every summer from 1930; the boat is not a portrait of a particular vessel.
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A schooner at sea by moonlight Unnamed
Schooner under the Moon, c. 1935 to 1936
Artist Alfred Wallis (1855 to 1942)
Where to see it Tate, London (T00219)
Medium Oil paint and graphite on cardboard on plywood
Wallis knew schooners from the inside: from 1876 he sailed in them across the North Atlantic between Penzance and Newfoundland, earning a good wage as a young married man. Some sixty years later, in his little house in Back Road West in St Ives, he painted them from memory on cardboard torn from packing boxes, with the ship's paint he bought in the Digey. Here a schooner under sail crosses a dark sea beneath a thin crescent moon, on a scrap of card cut to an irregular diamond. Ben Nicholson called Wallis's art something grown out of the Cornish seas and earth.
“something that has grown out of the Cornish seas and earth and which will endure”
The vessels Schooners carried cargoes such as dried cod across the North Atlantic between Newfoundland and Penzance in the nineteenth century; Wallis served in them from 1876.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows Tate Britain, London. Photo: Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A sailing ship on the North Atlantic, remembered from Wallis's voyage to Labrador Unnamed
Voyage to Labrador, c. 1935 to 1936
Artist Alfred Wallis (1855 to 1942)
Where to see it Tate, London (T00220)
Medium Oil on wood
As a young man Wallis sailed on schooners across the North Atlantic between Penzance and Newfoundland, and in August 1876 he went to Batteau Harbour, a remote part of Labrador, spending several months there as ship's cook. On the way home in October his ship, the Belle Aventure, met a storm, and the crew survived only by throwing part of her cargo of dried cod overboard. Some sixty years later, in St Ives, he painted the voyage from memory on a piece of wood. He said he painted what we may never see again, and this is his own youth under sail.
“what use To Bee out of my own memery what we may never see again”
The vessels Schooners carried cargoes such as dried cod across the North Atlantic between Cornwall and Newfoundland; Wallis's return voyage from Labrador in 1876 was aboard the Belle Aventure.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows Tate Britain, London. Photo: Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
SS Alba Named ship
Wreck of the Alba, c. 1938 to 1939
Artist Alfred Wallis (1855 to 1942)
Where to see it Tate, London (T06871)
Medium Oil on wood
On the night of 31 January 1938 the Panamanian steamer Alba, seeking shelter from a north-westerly gale, mistook the lights of Porthmeor for those of St Ives and went aground on the Three Brothers rocks, below the town where Wallis lived. The St Ives lifeboat took off all her crew and then overturned on the way in; the lifeboatmen were saved, but five of Alba's men died. Wallis, a former deep-sea sailor then in his eighties, painted the wreck several times. In his pictures scale follows importance rather than perspective, like an early map, as though told by a neighbour who watched it all.
The real ship Alba was a 2,310-ton steel steamship built by the Detroit Shipbuilding Company in 1920, 76.5 metres long, owned under the Panamanian flag. She went aground off St Ives on 31 January 1938; her boiler can still be seen on Porthmeor Beach.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows Tate Britain, London. Photo: Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A catboat under sail off Cape Cod Unnamed
Ground Swell, 1939
Artist Edward Hopper (1882 to 1967)
Where to see it National Gallery of Art, Washington (Corcoran Collection)
Medium Oil on canvas
Hopper painted this at his studio in Truro on Cape Cod in August and September 1939; his daybook records that he finished it on 15 September, a fortnight after war broke out in Europe. A group of young people sail a heeling catboat on a bright sea, but nobody looks at anybody: all eyes are on a bell buoy rolling in the swell, its clanging bell a warning. The curator Adam Greenhalgh has suggested the picture may reflect the beginning of the war, and cirrus clouds hint at a storm to come. It is Homer's Breezing Up retold with notes of peril, a lovely afternoon sail with danger in it.
The vessels A single-masted catboat under sail; Hopper laid on the white sail thickly with a palette knife and added the rigging in graphite pencil.
Sources Wikipedia · Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Drawing
HMS Ark Royal Named ship
HMS Ark Royal in Action, 1940
Artist Eric Ravilious (1903 to 1942)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 284)
Medium Watercolour and graphite on paper
Painted from the destroyer Highlander during the Norwegian campaign and inscribed 9th June 1940, this is a night scene: the carrier Ark Royal firing her guns, four other ships faint on the horizon. The Imperial War Museum reads it as a picture of the sublime, where the brightness of the explosion hides for a moment how precarious the crew are, utterly dependent on their metal ship at sea. Ravilious keeps his usual patterned calm, which makes the flash of gunfire all the more startling. Ark Royal came home from Norway; she was lost to a U-boat torpedo seventeen months later.
“the crew utterly dependent on the metal boat for their lives at sea”
The real ship Built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead and completed in November 1938, Ark Royal was the first ship on which the hangars and flight deck were an integral part of the hull. Torpedoed by U-81 on 13 November 1941, she sank the next day with the loss of one man.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Drawing
HMS Glorious Named ship
HMS Glorious in the Arctic, 1940
Artist Eric Ravilious (1903 to 1942)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 283)
Medium Watercolour on paper
Ravilious sailed to Norway on 24 May 1940 aboard the destroyer Highlander, escorting Glorious, and painted the carrier from her deck. The picture shows Hurricanes and Gladiators coming in to land during the evacuation from Norway; the Imperial War Museum notes the joke in it, a ship aptly shown in glorious sunshine, the sky and sea built from his careful cross-hatching. On 8 June Glorious was sunk with great loss of life, which gives this calm, bright watercolour a weight Ravilious could not have known.
“aptly shown in glorious sunshine with aircraft almost cheerfully in flight above”
The real ship Glorious was completed in late 1916 as a Courageous-class battlecruiser and rebuilt as an aircraft carrier between 1924 and 1930. While returning from the evacuation of Norway she was sunk by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on 8 June 1940, with the loss of over 1,200 lives.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Drawing
Warships off Norway seen from the destroyer HMS Highlander Unnamed
Midnight Sun, 1940
Artist Eric Ravilious (1903 to 1942)
Where to see it Tate, London (N05723)
Medium Watercolour and graphite on paper
Taken on by the War Artists Advisory Committee in December 1939 and assigned to the Admiralty, Ravilious sailed to Norway on 24 May 1940 aboard the destroyer Highlander, escorting the carrier Glorious. The title of this watercolour places it in the far north, where the sun does not set in summer. We stand on a destroyer's deck by a depth-charge thrower, a lifebuoy and a coiled rail, and look out to a carrier and her escorts on the horizon under a low red sun. The light is the real subject, and war at sea looks strangely serene.
The vessels HMS Highlander, the destroyer that carried Ravilious north, was ordered by Brazil as Jaguaribe, bought by Britain in September 1939 and commissioned in March 1940; she later led Atlantic convoy escorts, including Convoy SC 122 in March 1943, and was sold for scrap in 1946.
Sources Tate · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
HMS Kelly Named ship
HMS 'Kelly' Limping Home from the Skagerrak, 1941
Artist William Dring (1904 to 1990)
Where to see it National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (BHC2413)
Medium Oil on canvas
As an official war artist Dring painted mostly portraits for the Admiralty, but he also made a few paintings from photographs, of which this atmospheric canvas is one. At 22.45 on 9 May 1940 Mountbatten's destroyer Kelly was torpedoed north of Denmark by the German S-boat S-31; both boiler rooms flooded and she lost all power, taking a severe list to starboard. Towed first by Bulldog and then by the tug Watermeyer through worsening weather, with only eighteen volunteers left aboard, she reached the Tyne on the evening of 13 May. The picture is about survival: a crippled ship that refused to sink.
The real ship Built by Hawthorn Leslie at Hebburn on the Tyne, launched on 25 October 1938 and commissioned on 23 August 1939, Kelly was the flotilla leader of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla under Lord Louis Mountbatten; repaired after the 1940 torpedoing, she was lost in action in 1941 during the Battle of Crete.
Sources Royal Museums Greenwich · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where the original is kept. Photo: TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A merchant ship loading Matilda tanks for Russia Unnamed
Loading Tanks for Russia, 1941
Artist Leslie Cole (1910 to 1976)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 1922)
Medium Oil on canvas
In 1941 Britain began sending tanks to the Soviet Union, and Cole, then teaching at Hull College of Art and trying to win work as a war artist, recorded the loading in Hull Docks. A Matilda tank swings down from a crane onto the deck of a merchant ship while six merchant seamen watch and a soldier rides on the tank; another Matilda already sits on deck beside an officer in a red cap. The ship is a workhorse, and the picture is about the men who handled cargo bound for Russia.
The vessels British merchant ships carried tanks and other war material to the Soviet Union from 1941 as part of Allied aid; the ship here, loading at Hull, is not identified.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
HMS Wrestler Named ship
A Destroyer Rescuing Survivors, 1942
Artist Richard Eurich (1903 to 1992)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 2297)
Medium Oil on canvas
The Imperial War Museum records this as survivors in a lifeboat preparing to be picked up by a destroyer in a heavy sea, and associates it with HMS Wrestler. To make sure his seas and ships were right, Eurich made several trips on destroyers patrolling the Straits of Dover, and it shows: the moment of rescue hangs on seamanship, the small boat and the warship brought together in rough water. It is the other side of his Survivors from a Torpedoed Ship, the ending that did come for many crews. The destroyer becomes a place of safety, not of war.
The real ship Wrestler was a W-class destroyer built by Swan Hunter at Wallsend, laid down in July 1917 and completed in May 1918; she was active again in the Second World War from 1939 to 1944.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
The upturned lifeboat of a torpedoed merchant ship Unnamed
Survivors from a Torpedoed Ship, 1942
Artist Richard Eurich (1903 to 1992)
Where to see it Tate, London (N05692)
Medium Oil on canvas
Eurich worked for the Admiralty from 1941 to 1945; to get his ships right he made trips on destroyers patrolling the Straits of Dover, and some pictures were built from photographs and eyewitness accounts, others wholly from imagination. This is one of the imagined ones: exhausted men clinging to the upturned hull of their lifeboat, their ship gone. It was greatly praised, Winston Churchill among its admirers, but the War Artists' Advisory Committee quickly withdrew it from public display for fear it would harm recruitment to the Merchant Navy. The small boat, keel to the sky, says what official pictures left out.
The vessels Every merchant ship carried lifeboats, and in the Second World War crews of torpedoed ships took to them; the ship and men here are imagined, not a record of a single sinking.
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows Tate Britain, London. Photo: Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
The convoy of the North African landings, 1942, with two destroyers Unnamed
The Great Convoy to North Africa, 1942, 1943
Artist Richard Eurich (1903 to 1992)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 3477)
Medium Oil on panel
A long, thin panorama, more than a metre and a quarter wide and barely a third of a metre tall, of a convoy heading out for the Atlantic, seen from the shore. In the centre a pair of disembodied hands hold binoculars up to us, and in their lenses two destroyers of the escort jump into close focus. Eurich, known for his panoramic seascapes, turns the viewer into a watcher on the coast, counting ships and wishing them well. The title names its purpose: the great convoy of 1942 that carried the Allied forces to North Africa.
The vessels Troop and supply convoys under naval escort carried the Allied forces to North Africa in 1942; the ships in the panorama are not individually identified.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Maltese dgħajjes and fishing boats damaged by bombing Unnamed
Maltese Fishermen Mending Bombed Dghaisas and other Boats, 1943
Artist Leslie Cole (1910 to 1976)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 3240)
Medium Oil on canvas
Cole, a war artist from 1942, reached Malta in May 1943 as the siege of the island was ending, and here, instead of warships, he chose the island's own boats. Five fishermen repair five boats, four seen bow on in the foreground and the largest side on behind them, against a white brick wall and whitewashed buildings. The dgħajsa, Malta's harbour boat, had ferried passengers across Grand Harbour since the days of the Knights. Here the war is measured in damaged planking and patient hands.
The vessels The dgħajsa tal-pass developed in the early seventeenth century as a water taxi and was widely used to ferry passengers in Grand Harbour and Marsamxett Harbour from the eighteenth to the twentieth century; only a few remain in service today.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Ships in the port of Algiers Unnamed
The Port of Algiers in the Haze (Le Port d'Alger sous la brume), 1943
Artist Albert Marquet (1875 to 1947)
Where to see it Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux (Bx 1962.9.6)
Medium Oil on canvas
As a frail boy in Bordeaux, with a club foot and uncorrected short sight, Marquet would slip in among the barrels and bales on the quays to watch the ships arrive and leave; water and boats became his lifelong subject. From 1920 he left Paris every winter for Algiers, where he painted the port tirelessly, and he spent the Second World War there. This late view, painted in 1943, wraps the ships and quays of the harbour in a pink and violet haze, palms dark in the foreground. It now belongs to his native Bordeaux, where his love of harbours began.
The vessels Cargo steamers and harbour craft in the port of Algiers during the Second World War; none is identified.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikidata · Wikipedia (FR)
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Mulberry harbour caissons moored off Selsey Bill Unnamed
Mulberry: The Prefabricated Harbour Assembled, Selsey Bill, 1944
Artist Richard Eurich (1903 to 1992)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART LD 5189)
Medium Oil on canvas
Inscribed Selsey Bill, May 1944, a few weeks before D-Day. Offshore float the floating caissons that would form the Mulberry harbour, moored along the Sussex coast; in the foreground the beach is lined with concrete anti-invasion defences. Eurich, who had spent the early 1930s living in small fishing ports on the south coast, paints the strangest fleet of the war: floating blocks of concrete waiting to become a harbour. The picture holds its breath, like the whole coast that spring.
The vessels The Mulberry harbours were prefabricated ports, their floating caissons towed across the Channel to Normandy after the landings of June 1944.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
Twentieth-century art · Drawing
HMCS Prince David Named ship
On the Bridge, 1944
Artist Alex Colville (1920 to 2013)
Where to see it Canadian War Museum, Ottawa (19820303-252)
Medium Watercolour, pastel and ink on paper
Dated 24 August 1944, which was also Colville's twenty-fourth birthday, this watercolour puts us on the bridge of HMCS Prince David in the Mediterranean. A crewman in dark glasses and headphones sits in the foreground, his jersey stencilled with the ship's name and Royal Canadian Navy; behind him an officer scans the sea through binoculars. Nothing happens, and that is the point: the watchful calm of a ship at war. After the landings in the south of France on 15 August, Prince David had spent the days until the 24th carrying reinforcements to the invasion area.
The real ship Ordered from Cammell Laird in 1929 by Canadian National Steamships as a small three-funnelled luxury liner for the West Coast, Prince David became an armed merchant cruiser in 1939, was converted into an infantry landing ship in 1943, took part in the landings in the south of France in August 1944, and returned to merchant service after the war.
Sources Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
Tirpitz Named ship
The Wreck of the Tirpitz, June 1945
Artist Stephen Bone (1904 to 1958)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (IWM ART LD 5441)
Medium Oil on board
Signed and dated 21 June 1945, Bone's small oil sketch on board shows what was left of the great battleship in the waters off Tromsø. Tirpitz had capsized on 12 November 1944 after RAF Lancasters hit her with 12,000-pound Tallboy bombs; between 950 and 1,204 men died. Bone paints the overturned hull as a long rust-orange shape lying in a grey fjord below snow-streaked mountains, tiny figures standing on it and a small vessel moored alongside. There is no triumph in it, only the strange stillness of an enormous ship turned over like a stranded whale.
The real ship Tirpitz, second of the two Bismarck-class battleships of the Kriegsmarine, was sent to Norway in 1942 to threaten Allied convoys and tie down the Royal Navy; she capsized on 12 November 1944 after Tallboy bomb hits, and the wreck was broken up by a joint Norwegian and German salvage operation between 1948 and 1957.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A fully rigged sailing ship made of the sea Myth and legend
The Seducer (Le Séducteur), 1950
Artist René Magritte (1898 to 1967)
Where to see it Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
Medium Oil on canvas
Magritte paints a fully rigged sailing ship on the sea under a blue sky, but the ship has no substance of its own: its silhouette is filled with the same waves it sails on. It is the sea taking the shape of a ship, or a ship dissolving back into the sea. He painted it in Brussels in 1950 and made further versions in 1951 and 1953, a sign of how the idea held him. The small canvas, 38 by 46 centimetres, is worked in dark and light blues, a ship made entirely of the element that carries it.
The legend An imaginary ship: a fully rigged sailing ship whose outline is filled with the waves of the sea.
Sources Wikipedia · Wikipedia (FR)
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, where the original is kept. Photo: Morgan Riley, Midlothian, Virginia, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Painting
A submarine seen through its periscope, from a DC war comic Myth and legend
Torpedo...Los!, 1963
Artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923 to 1997)
Where to see it Private collection
Medium Oil on canvas
Lichtenstein took this image from Jack Abel's drawing for the DC war comic Our Fighting Forces of October 1962, in a story called Battle of the Ghost Ships? He enlarged the captain's face, moved his scar from nose to cheek, opened his mouth wide and cut the speech balloon down to two words: the order to fire. The submarine is present as the periscope pressed to the captain's eye, a painting about seeing through a machine. It was shown with Drowning Girl and Whaam! at Leo Castelli in 1963, and in 1989 set an auction record for the artist.
“a comic-strip image of sea warfare”
The legend A fictional submarine from a comic book war story, not a real vessel.
Sources Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists.
Twentieth-century art · Painting
SS Amsterdam Named ship
SS Amsterdam in Front of Rotterdam, 1966
Artist Malcolm Morley (1931 to 2018)
Where to see it Private collection
Medium Painting on canvas
Morley, a Londoner whose balsawood model of HMS Nelson was destroyed with his home by a wartime bomb, became one of the first photorealists in New York in the mid-1960s, and ships were among his most frequent subjects. He tried painting liners from life at Pier 57 and found he could not take them in at a glance, so he turned to postcards and travel brochures, copying them square by square through a grid, sometimes even their white borders. This canvas of the Amsterdam in front of Rotterdam belongs to that moment. In 2015 it sold at Christie's for nearly 1.9 million dollars.
“it was impossible to comprehend it in one glance”
The real ship The painting reproduces a printed postcard of a passenger ship named Amsterdam off Rotterdam; the vessel's own history is not recorded.
Sources Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows Rotterdam. Photo: FaceMePLS from The Hague, The Netherlands, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Twentieth-century art · Drawing
HMS Agamemnon Named ship
HMS Agamemnon at Malta: Coaling and Taking in Ammunition, undated
Artist Frank Henry Mason (1875 to 1965)
Where to see it Imperial War Museums, London (Art.IWM ART 3131)
Medium Watercolour on paper
A battleship lies at anchor in a Malta harbour, seen from the starboard side, with small boats and barges clustered round her as she takes in coal and ammunition; fortifications and the signal station stand to the left. Mason had been to sea and trained as a marine engineer before he became a painter, and he records the dirty, tireless routine of keeping a coal-fired warship ready. Agamemnon was a veteran of the Dardanelles bombardments, and it was aboard her, at anchor off Lemnos, that the Ottoman Empire signed the Armistice of Mudros on 30 October 1918.
The real ship Agamemnon was a Lord Nelson-class pre-dreadnought launched in 1906 and completed in 1908. She bombarded the Dardanelles forts in 1915, shot down the Zeppelin LZ 55 over Salonica in 1916, and hosted the signing of the Armistice of Mudros at Lemnos on 30 October 1918; she was sold for scrap in January 1927.
Sources Imperial War Museums · Wikipedia
No free image of this work exists. The photograph shows the Imperial War Museums, London, where the original is kept. Photo: DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. See the work at the museum
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