Oil painting, 'Sea Piece: English Frigates at Anchor in a Calm, Saluting', Francis Swaine

An evening sky with low-level cumulous cloud and a dark cloud, overhead left, which casts a shadow across the sea and shore in the foreground. On the right is a two-decker, English man-of-war, starboard view, with her mizzen, fore and main topsails half mast. She flies the red ensign, what may be a tricolour common pennant and two wind vanes. She fires a salute to port, probably at the English man-of-war on her port side in the distance. Close astern the man-of-war is a small ship’s boat with four men aboard while towards her rear, is a barge with pairs of rowers.

Given by R. H. Cooke, FRCS

Given by R. H. Cooke, FRCS, 1883

This painting is based on a signed work by Peter Monamy in the National Maritime Museum (A Man-of-War Firing a Gun at Sundown, BHC1003). The main elements of the composition, with a two-deck, man-of-war on the right and a beached hoy, a type of coasting vessel, in the left-foreground, are broadly similar. There are however, subtle variations for example, in the rigging of the larger vessels, in the hoy with its surrounding figures and in the smaller barges and distant vessels of both works. When writing about a similar painting by Monamy in the Metropolitan Museum (Harbour Scene: An English Ship with Sails Loosened Firing a Gun, 60.94.2) Katharine Baetjer notes that this type of composition is typical of Monamy, as is the small barge with the orderly repetition of rowers pulling away from the ship’s stern and the profile of the ship’s stern silhouetted against plumes of smoke (Katharine Baetjer, British Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575-1875, 2009, pp.34-36). 139-1883 is signed in the lower, left corner, with the abbreviation ‘F.S’ and the ‘S’ has a looped flourish.

The influence of Peter Monamy on Francis Swaine’s style has been noted and has led to an unfounded tradition that the latter worked in Monamy’s studio (see Stephen Deuchar, ‘Francis Swaine’, Oxford Art Online).

This signed, marine view is based on a painting by Peter Monamy of an English man-of-war and a beached hoy, a type of coasting vessel. Swaine was a successful maritime painter and draughtsman who was influenced by Willem van de Velde the Younger, as well as his contemporaries, including Peter Monamy.

139-1883