ABSTRACT
The intelligence of a painter, looking out to sea, into the void, is engaged by the subtleties of spatial mapping. The sea is a back projection, a single, continuous plane stretching to the horizon. There are storms, times when the sails are down and the mariners look grimly at the lowering sky – or times when they survey, from the safety of the shore, the old enemy. Space and turbulence, a snowstorm at sea, unstructured, unplaced within the picture plane, was one of the essential romantic legacies. The depiction of immaterial swirls and spirals was claimed as expression of internal as well as external forces. All Hands shorten Sail, 1890, shows the sailors climbing the rigging to shorten the sails before an approaching storm. Sail Ho, 1890, and Hope of Rescue, 1894, show a storm-tossed vessel, its main mast broken, its deck awash, at the moment when the beleaguered crew catch sight of a possible rescue ship.
