Maritime painting is the genre of art devoted to the sea and seafaring, depicting ships, harbours, coastlines, naval battles, storms and the life of sailors. It encompasses grand oil paintings, ship portraits commissioned by owners and captains, and modest watercolours and sketches of coastal scenes.
The genre flourished in the seventeenth-century Netherlands, where artists such as Willem van de Velde the Elder and Younger recorded the shipping of a great maritime nation; the Van de Veldes later settled in England and shaped the British school. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries painters including Dominic Serres, Nicholas Pocock and J. M. W. Turner celebrated naval power and the drama of the sea, while ship portraitists in ports from Liverpool to Hong Kong produced accurate likenesses of individual vessels for their crews. Collectors weigh the artist, the accuracy of rigging and flags, the identification of a named ship, and the condition of canvas and paint layers, since many works have been relined or retouched. Provenance linked to a naval family or a known vessel adds interest. Maritime pictures suit studies, halls and dining rooms and sit naturally alongside marine instruments and ship models.
