Rightly, an early place in this record must be assigned to Charles Brooking, because in his works can be seen for the first time the clear intention to study marine subjects with a perception of their inherent characteristics. Brooking’s intimate knowledge of shipping, acquired during his early days at Deptford Dockyard, is plainly shown in such a picture as _The Calm_ (p. 35), which has an attractive truth and precision of statement. It is a matter for much regret that his early death should have cut short a career which was so full of promise, and in which he accomplished so much that deserves to be remembered; but honour is due to him as the painter who gave to our school of marine painting its foundation of accurate observation and careful regard for the actualities of the subject.
Other men carried on ably the tradition he had established, and in a comparatively short time there grew up a by no means inconsiderable group of painters who took an effective interest in the pictorial material with which the sea provided them. Within half a century of his death he had many successors, some of whom were true sea painters, though, perhaps, the majority were landscape men who included the sea in their study of nature’s manifestations, and only turned to it, more or less frequently, in the intervals of their more usual work. Yet in this latter class were counted some of the greatest British masters whose achievements rank among the best by which our school is distinguished. To the company of these masters certainly belongs George Morland, the erratic genius who, ranging over a wide field of subjects, found that the sea was often one of the most helpful sources of his inspiration. His coast scenes--of which the _Fishermen Hauling in a Boat_ (p. 37) is a good example--have a characteristic measure of strenuous vitality and are painted with all the sureness of touch that marked his handling of the rustic motives which occupied so much of his attention. Morland, however, did not paint marine pictures so frequently as his contemporary, John Wilson, who was a consistent student of the sea and lived for some years at Folkestone. His capacity can scarcely be questioned. The picture reproduced (p. 38) has a very modern freshness of manner and shows exceptional knowledge of wave movement and atmospheric subtleties, and though there is in it something of the convention of the period, it certainly conveys the sentiment of nature.