Age Of Sail Water Color Paintings
Last year at this time, Morven Building and Garden hosted a awful acknowledged exhibit, “Portrait of Place: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints of New Jersey, 1761-1898, From the Accumulating of Joseph J. Felcone.”
Felcone, a arresting book beneficiary ambidextrous in specialized antiquities, brought the museum’s absorption to a accumulating of amphibian art and artifacts by accession New Jersey collector, Richard W. Updike.
The Updike collection, “The Age of the Sail,” now on affectation at Morven, is a abandonment of sorts for the building in that it includes altar and artifacts in accession to the two-dimensional works that commonly ample its bristles affectation galleries.
The accomplished art on affectation — and there is abundant of it and it’s of aerial affection — is aggrandized by added than 100 altar that asperous the storms at sea, the continued annoying canicule of apoplectic waters, as able-bodied as shipwrecks and rescues. There are additionally items from shipbuilding and captain authoritative and, while these three-dimensional artifacts cannot be advised “fine” art, they do appearance the art of able craftsmanship.
Pay accurate absorption to the 19th aeon chestnut sea captain’s board with its accomplished axis and accurate absorption to detail, the about 1500 brindle captain’s chest and the 18th aeon cut bottle captain’s decanter. There’s a backward 18th aeon or 19th aeon American medical chest from the brig Philadelphia that has a corrective atom on pine, and there’s a 19th aeon American amber mast top that alone an artist’s easily could fabricate.
Items such as these, and abounding more, are interspersed throughout the museum’s galleries, area the paintings, assets and lithographs are displayed.
Many of the paintings are absolutely admirable watercolors by George Emerick Essig (1886-1926), who was built-in in Philadelphia but confused to Atlantic City, area he corrective the Jersey Bank abounding time. On affectation in the museum’s aboriginal arcade is his “Ray of Hope,” assuming a address tossed on a agitated sea, its masts broken.
In contrast, in the abutting arcade he offers a beautifully peaceful painting, “Square Rigger in the Moonlight,” assuming the majestic address sailing agilely beneath a abounding moon.
Another of his works that finer captures that aeon of time in our country’s amphibian history, as able-bodied as the affection of those who lived it, is “Two Women and Accouchement on the Beach.” In this watercolor, he shows the women and accouchement on the albino bank watching the boats branch out to sea.
In the aperture arcade of this exhibit, there is a affectation of items from the United States Life Saving Service, which served for 44 years afore acceptable the United States Coast Guard in 1915. Those artifacts accompany two paintings by Frederic Schiller Cozzens, “USLSS Surfmen off to a Wreck” and “Volunteers Returning From a Wreck.” (1904). In the first, he portrays the aggregation canoeing out through able breakers. The accomplishment arena takes abode on a storm-flooded New Jersey bank area the aggregation is apparent affairs the accomplishment baiter up assimilate the sand.
In December 1904, the bones of the 201-foot schooner Lizzie H. Brayton came aground in Point Pleasant. On affectation in this affectation is a watercolor by Gerard R. Hardenbergh that affectation abstracts say may characterize that wreck. Hardenbergh (1855-1915) corrective the affairs on the Jersey Bank while active on his houseboat, Pelican, which he kept anchored in Bay Head.
A ample and ominously aphotic oil painting, “Two-Masted Schooner At Sea,” by “George Willcos” (or Willcoss?) is on display, as able-bodied as “The New Jersey Highlands,” a watercolor by 19th aeon artisan Granville Perkins. An oil account of the address Ann Murray was done by Amos Birdsall Jr. (1865-1938), who was descended from a continued band of sea captains, builders and privateers.
Another affectionate of art on affectation is scrimshaw, an art anatomy I accept charge be classified as a folk art or craft, but it carries abounding of the characterizations of accomplished art. Scrimshaw is the art of cautiously abundant block or abstraction done by sailors on the cartilage or ivory harvested from abyssal mammals.
Also accumulation that alliance of duke ascendancy and aesthetic eyes are etchings on display. Two of accurate absorption are Essig’s “Home by the Bridge by the Bay” and “Fisherman’s Home,” which shows a home at water’s bend with a baiter pulled up onshore. An etching, “Pumpman Accursed” by John A. Nobel (1913-1983), depicts a artisan toiling at the knees of a ship. This is displayed abreast absolute 19th aeon ships’ knees.
The altar on affectation ambit from the actual baby — needles, buttons, a pen and inkwell — through ceramics plates, caster blocks, lanterns, flasks, guns, knives and hatchets, to a mid-19th aeon American ship’s wheel, a gouged sailmaker’s bank and a continuing binnacle that was advised to abode a ambit with a lamp for night viewing.
This is an affectation that will amuse historians, those who adore able adroitness and accomplished art lovers as well.
“The Age of the Sail”When: 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Wednesday-Fridays; noon-4 p.m. Saturdays and SundaysWhere: Morven Building and Garden, 55 Stockton St., PrincetonContact: (609) 924-8144 or morven.org
