Robert Salmon (Anglo/American, 1775-1844) Ailsa Craig /A Firth of Clyde, Scotland, View

Description:

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.

Estimate $8,000-12,000

The retouch is minute dots, primarily two diagonal lines of dots in the sky stretching from the right edge up and about 2/3s of the way across the composition. There are also additional tiny dots, mostly near the edges of the panel. There are subtle abrasions to the edges from the rabbet of the frame. The craquelure is fine and stable.

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