Customer Reviews

The Art of Nautical Illustration

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I've spent many a long and happy hour aboard literary ships, from Viking longboats to modern warships, and perhaps my fondest times were spent with Horatio Hornblower or Jack Aubrey in the days of fighting sail.

Here is a prize to be snapped up, a feast to be savoured, an illustration on every page, working through from the earliest ship paintings of royal barges carring Pharoahs up the Nile to Charles Turner's painting of Britain's last battleship being towed to the breakers.

In between there are hundreds of pictures, every one carefully selected and described. The illustrations are evocative - I'm looking at an early passenger liner now and I can all but smell the coal smoke, feel the spray on my face from the waves and hear the comments of the passengers lining the rails as they cruise past.

The text is focussed on the painters - there are many, many long columns devoted to the artists, their lives, their styles, their main works. We learn of the various schools and techniques and developments in the field of nautical illustration. But the artists are the focus, as they should be, and this is a very human book - I felt at times that I was standing behind an artist, looking over his shoulder as he captured the essence of some mighty ship. Or of some cameo, passengers on a liner, fishermen cleaning their nets, small boats serving a fleet anchored in the background.

Eminently readable, it provides the authorative background for the real reason I bought this book - the illustrations. This is a book I can lose myself in, sailing away on waves that have long since spent themselves, on ships that are but memories now, with painters, dust themselves but living fresh and new in these pages.

The author, Michael Leek is a professional illustrator and has the artist's eye for picking out great maritime paintings. Starting with the Dutch School of 18th Century, Leek progresses chapter by chapter through the different national schools of maritime art. Along with great paintings, Leek provides a short biography of the artists.

This is not an academic book. It is written for the person who loves paintings of old ships. This is a book rich in atmosphere. I would recommend this book for anybody who likes spend lazy afternoons thumbing through beautiful books.