Origin: Italian

Among the 19th and 20th century ship portraitists who practiced in Italian seaport cities, the father and son, Tommaso and Antonio de Simone are probably the best known. The son, Antonio de Simone worked in watercolor and watercolor variants, chiefly but not limited to gouache, while Tommaso, the father, is noted for working exclusively in…

The patriarch of a family of artist to emerge in Venice, Giovanni "John" Luzzo specialized in portraits of foreign ships within the beauty of Venice. Working in watercolor and gouache on paper, his paintings are known for tight details in spite of the difficulty of the waterbase mediums, and for echos of the folk art…

Loy was an Italian port painter for more than fifteen years. He worked in the Gibralter region from 1865-67 and moved to Trieste afterward. This is the latest dated work uncovered so far of this artist. Painting ships from direct dockside commissions, his works ended up throughout Europe as the visiting and local captains took…

Michele Renault was a ship portrait artist in Livorno, Italy- a port sometimes referred to as "Leghorn". Renault often painted ship’s portraits for foreign ship captains while they were moored in Leghorn Harbor, particularly the English- a tradition he would pass to his son Luigi who was an artist famous in his own right for…

Italian artist Paolo Sala was best known as a painter of marines and portraits. A student of Camillo Boito at the school of architecture at the Brera Academy, his initial focus was on historical and romantic subjects. Although he studied and occasionally would use watercolor, he excelled at and became best known for his oil…

The Neapolitan port painter, Tomaso de Simone is considered to be one of the most important ship portraitists who practiced in the Italian seaport cities. The father of noted sea painter Antonio de Simone, Tomaso specialized in oils, the majority depicting warships and merchant vessels. He also created scenes of the Battles of Lissa (1867)…