This early work of maritime master Robert Salmon is being offered for the first time in over 100 years, having been in the same family all this time. Family lore held that the painting was won in a bet by F. Wilder Bellamy Sr., born circa 1890, senior partner in NY brokerage firm Dominick & Dominick. Bellamy would later go on to sit on the board of ITT. It’s been passed down by decent through the family. It came to us in very good condition for its age, and we believe we were the first to conserve the painting since it was originally completed.

We were taken with this painting from the moment we saw it and it’s even better in person. It’s everything a collector could hope for in a Robert Salmon painting: a large scale work that’s crisp, with vivid color, great composition and bursting with detail.

On the one hand, it’s grand- it’s a portrait of a merchant ship in top form heading out, illuminated by brilliant shafts of light breaking through the clouds. Light and dark play throughout the sweeping view of Whitehaven which bustles with activity on land and sea. And it’s this activity that gives us the intimacy of the work in its incredible detail. Each view reveals more of the great little vignettes in the harbor, at the fort, along the far docks and on all the ships and small boats out on the water.

The rendering of the ship is unusually fine, with a shining black and red hull, the white armored figurehead of the ship’s namesake Greek hero, and the sails in motion. There is a simplicity of form here, a sense of not one brushstroke wasted but each element rendered as necessary.

Aboard ship the cannons are being tested and cleaned by sailors while other men in tall hats talk in groups fore and aft. Smoke from previous blasts rolls across the surface of the water. The sailor on the bowsprit pauses in his adjustments of sailcloth and looks directly at us, almost as if we’ve surprised him.

The left side features an astonishing display of masts of ships moored in the protected harbor – their tightly packed stems interrupted only by the port’s breakwater and structures. Even here there are many stories- ships heading out, work being done on other ships and in between many tiny figures going about their business.

Elsewhere look at the far fortification amongst the cliffs, note all the small ships at sea bobbing between the even sets of greenish waves and with all of it the interplay of light and the outstanding skill at rendering each element.

The merchant ship ACHILLES was built was built at Sunderland in 1799. Throughout her career she voyaged to the West Indies, the Baltic and northern Russia as well as plying the coasts of England. After this was painted she served as a military transport under the Royal Navy Transport Board. She was lengthened in the 1830’s and served as a reliable ship through the end of that decade.

This is a unique piece from Salmon, fresh to the market, which showcases the considerable artistic talent and deep knowledge of ships and seafaring life which would make him an inspiration for generations of maritime artists who came after. A tour-de-force piece.

Provenance: Private American Collection, 100 years in the same family