Action at Sea
I’m pleased to announce that beginning in August, some of my naval and marine artwork will be on exhibit and available for purchase at:
Gloucester Arts on Main
6580 Main Street, Gloucester, VA 23061
Tel: (804) 824-9464, Website: https://gloucesterarts.org
There were two main influences which encouraged me to attempt the challenging world of historical naval painting. The first goes back to the two wonderful years we lived in the paradise-island country of Mauritius in the South Indian Ocean. I loved the sandy beaches, the crystal-clear water and coral lagoons, the tropical vegetation and the mountains!
Mauritius has a very rich maritime history dating back to the 17th Century when its first European settlers were the Dutch. The French came next and they named the island 'Isle de France.' During the next two hundred years of global rivalry between Great Britain and France, Isle de France served as an important base of operations for famous French corsairs like Robert Surcouf in 'La Confiance' to prey on ships of the British East India Company and for Admiral Suffren and his naval squadron to wage war against the British in trying to gain control over Southern India and Ceylon.
The island finally changed hands from the French to the British much later during the Napoleonic Wars. After a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Grand Port in 1810, the only multi-ship action which the British Royal Navy lost to the French during the Napoleonic Wars, they quickly came back and captured the island through a full military invasion.
It then remained a British colony until its independence in 1968. Here are my paintings based on the naval history of Mauritius:
The following original paintings are no longer available for sale but exist as either canvas reproductions or Fine Art paper prints.
The second influence has been my husband Clyde who has been an amateur naval historian since childhood, even attending a naval prep school and considering a naval career at one time. Clyde has helped me with some of the background historical research that has gone into the paintings. His own passion for naval history manifests itself by building scale model ships and sometimes, designing fairly elaborate dioramas which tell the story of significant moments in naval history. I thought that while we are on the related topics of naval art and history, I might share with you a few photos of his dioramas:
1794 - Siege of Calvi, Corsica (1-1200 scale)
1798 - Battle of the Nile (1-1200 scale)
1810 - Battle of Grand Port, Mauritius (1-1200 scale)
1930's - USS Lexington (CV-2) in the Gaillard Cut, Panama Canal (1-1200 scale)
1938 - Royal Navy port visit, Gibraltar (1-5000 scale)
1940 - British Attack on Mers=el-Kebir (1-2400 scale)