Beschreibung:

Robert Salmon (Anglo/American, 1775-1844) Ailsa Craig/A Firth of Clyde, Scotland, View Signed, inscribed, and dated "No. 818/Painted by R. Salmon/1835" on the reverse. Oil on panel, 10 x 12 1/2 in. (25.4 x 31.7 cm), framed. Condition: Fine craquelure, minor retouch. Provenance: Mr. Henry Channing Rivers, Northeast Harbor, Maine, by family descent to a private New England collection. Literature: John Wilmerding, Robert Salmon Painter of Ship & Shore, Boston: Peabody Museum of Salem and Boston Public Library, 1971, p. 95. N.B. Robert Salmon an English-born marine artist, spent his early years painting in England and Scotland, including the ports and shipbuilding centers of Liverpool and Greenock. His style was based on the older English marine artists, themselves influenced by the Dutch. In 1828 Salmon immigrated to the U.S., settling in Boston where he established a successful career painting ship portraits and coastal views. Salmon had a great impact on the direction of American marine painting. Using precise foreground detail and devoting a large area of the composition to the atmospheric effects of the light-filled sky, Salmon's works foreshadowed the Luminist style of Fitz Henry Lane. Salmon left Boston in 1842, returning to Britain, perhaps to the Scottish coast. In a catalogue of Robert Salmon's Pictures 1828-1840, which is reproduced as Appendix A of John Wilmerding's monograph on Salmon, the artist lists two paintings he made of Ailsa Craig in March of 1840. The Craig is listed as the subject of three other earlier paintings from his inventory, and was a favored subject, whether painted on location or from the artist's memory. Ailsa Craig, rising some 1,100 feet high, is a well known landmark in the Firth of Clyde where it joins the Irish Channel.