PALM BEACH DAILY SOCIETY COLUMN
John Stobart maritime art is focus of Four Arts retrospective
SOCIETY
By JAN SJOSTROM
Daily News Arts Editor
Friday, February 05, 2010
What: The Grandeur of America’s Age of Sail: The Paintings of John Stobart
Where: The Society of the Four Arts
When: Through Feb. 28
For more information: 561-655-7226 or www.fourarts.org
In his father's eyes, the young John Stobart was a miserable
disappointment. He was a failure at school, and it didn't seem as though
he'd ever succeed in life. In desperation, his father enrolled him in a school
that taught the only thing at which his son excelled — art.
"The instant I got there, did I take off!" said Stobart, now 80 and the subject
of "The Grandeur of America's Age of Sail: The Paintings of John Stobart,"
a retrospective exhibition at The Society of the Four Arts.
Today, Stobart's historically accurate paintings of American ships and
ports during the heyday of sail power in the 19th century command prices
as high as $500,000. Jack Warner, founder of the Westervelt-Warner
Museum of American Art in Tuscaloosa, Ala., owns six of his paintings.
"He's one of my favorite artists," the collector said.
The exhibition was organized by the Four Arts and the artist's foundation.
With 60 oil paintings spanning six decades, it tracks Stobart's progress
from dunce to "the Rembrandt of contemporary maritime painters."
He's called that by J. Russell Jinishian, author of Bound for Blue Water, the
bible of contemporary marine art, who likens Stobart's signature
chiaroscuro lighting to that of the famous Dutch painter.
The Four Arts rarely showcases work by living artists. But Stobart's work is
exceptional, and maritime art is popular in Palm Beach, said Nancy Mato,
executive vice president and curator.
Stobart's art is grounded in the traditional classical training he received at
the Derby College of Arts and Crafts in his hometown of Derby, Great
Britain, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
He's a staunch advocate of painting from life. Several of his landscapes
painted on the spot are in the show. Artists develop their individuality by
interpreting what they see, he said. "The whole point is that you've got to
get your personality in the painting," he said. "That's the nucleus of what
fine art is about."
During his Royal Academy years, the artist discovered his facility for
combining land-based and nautical architecture in paintings such as King's
Reach, a portrayal of the Thames River waterfront.
Later, during a voyage to visit his father, who had moved to Zimbabwe,
Stobart conceived a lucrative idea — portraying the pride of the merchant
shipping fleet for their owners. That part of his career is represented in
works such as Elder Dempster Forcados, which depicts the Forcados
plying a bend in the Sapele River in Nigeria.
After a decade of profitable commissions, photography displaced painting
as the shipping companies' medium of choice, and Stobart looked
elsewhere for subjects.
He noticed that although the history of British ports and vessels was well
documented in art, that of their American counterparts was not. In 1966, he
made a cold call on Kennedy Galleries, a leading American art dealer in
New York, carrying four rolled-up paintings of historic American sailing
ships under his arm. The gallery gave him a show and launched his
career.
Stobart's paintings are meticulously researched from sources such as
period engravings and photographs and vessel plans.
Every painting tells a story. One 1884 scene slopes past men shoveling
snow on a street in New Bedford, Mass., toward a whaling brig floating in
the icy water. Another depicts ships abandoned in San Francisco's harbor
when passengers took off for the gold fields.
Palm Beach resident Kenneth Richter, whose Harbourtown by Moonlight is
in the exhibition, likes to get lost in the painting's "utterly serene feeling,
with the beautiful moonlit harbor and the light reflecting off the water. You
can sit and look at it and work your way into it with your mind."
These days Stobart, who lives in Fort Lauderdale and Westport, Mass., is
in a position to offer artists the kind of help he would have appreciated
when he was starting out. The Stobart Foundation provides financial aid to
artists who show promise in painting directly from nature to help them
make the transition from art school to the marketplace.
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