The effect of this formula was to regulate the composition and to prescribe the introduction of shipping in certain specified positions so as to conform to an accepted pictorial convention. To its dominance is due the general similarity which can be perceived between the works of John Wilson, Chambers, Crawford, and Müller, here illustrated, and which could be followed out in many other pictures by the lesser painters of the time--a similarity which was neither accidental nor unconscious, but directly induced by adherence to what were held to be the correct principles of picture designing. Moreover, there seems to have been a belief then that a painting of the sea must have some added interest to assure it of popularity, for a sea without shipping prominently placed upon it was hardly ever attempted; an incident was almost always introduced or a story suggested.
When Edwin Hayes began his career the earlier tradition was losing its authority and was being replaced by a less limited conception of the sea-painter’s mission. To some extent he came under it in his youth, but he was naturally responsive to new ideas and kept pace with the more modern developments. Anyhow, in his _Sunset at Sea_ (p. 63) there is no hint of the old convention, and there is no trace of the belief that an added interest was required to make a sea picture attractive. He was content to give faithfully his impression of the sea as it appeared before him, to tell no story save nature’s own, and to take for his incident the gleam of sunlight upon tossing waves stirred into movement by the wind--a poor subject, perhaps, according to the old standards, but one which to-day appeals to us as admirably satisfying and essentially complete.
From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards there has been a steadily growing tendency to enlarge the scope of marine painting and to allow to the men who practise it more and more freedom in the assertion of their personal feeling in art matters. That is why so much material of the most varied character is available now for the illustration of this branch of pictorial production, and why so many artists seek in it opportunities for the display of their capacities. They can approach it from the point of view that suits them best, they can interpret what they find there in the way that seems to them most appropriate, and they can, if their study is sincere, get most closely into touch with nature’s secrets.