Marine paintings at the New York Yacht Club - Cover Story

Magazine Antiques, July, 1999 by Robert B. Mackay

The collection of marine paintings at the New York Yacht Club in New York City is small compared to the club's assemblages of prints, models, and pieces of presentation silver. However, a great many marine artists of note who were active since the club was organized in 1844 are represented. The collection was formed by happenstance rather than design. Many of the earliest members of the club owed their fortunes to maritime enterprises, and for them yachting was the related avocation, and the club was the obvious repository for their treasures. In any event, by commission, gift, bequest, or unknown means (the club's accession records are far from complete) a collection of more than 150 paintings and watercolors was formed. Today the works hang in the New York City clubhouse designed by the firm of Warren and Wetmore in 1901, and its outpost, Harbour Court, in Newport, Rhode Island, originally designed for Mrs. John Nicholas Brown by Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson between 1904 and 1906.

Among the best-known paintings in the collection is the view of the schooner yacht America by an unknown artist (Pl. I). It was bequeathed to the club by a nonmember who felt it belonged there. Built for a New York Yacht Club syndicate, America was conceived as a floating adjunct to the American exhibits at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 in London. The swift yacht was developed from the lines of New York pilot schooners, which competed to meet incoming ships. America won the famous race around the Isle of Wight in August 1851, which was "open to yachts belonging to the clubs of all nations."(1) The victory was the beginning of the longest winning streak in the history of sport. The prize for that race was the Royal Yacht Squadron's Hundred Guinea Cup, which is today known as the America's Cup. The competition for this bottomless ewer has become integral to both the history and collections of the New York Yacht Club, which are full of depictions of memorable America's Cup matches.

Spinnaker Letting Go (Pl. III) captures such a moment during the ninth America's Cup match, in 1893, when the club's defender, Vigilant, defeated the challenger, Thomas Wyndham-Quin Windham (1841-1926), the earl of Dunraven's, Valkyrie II, three races to none. The contenders were the first of the huge sloops that raced for the cup until 1938. As Valkyrie II surged ahead in the windy final race, Captain Nathaniel Greene Herreshoff (1848-1938) of the Vigilant risked everything by loading on sail. Valkyrie H responded in kind, but her spinnaker was carried away and she lost the race by forty seconds. The English artist Barlow Moore portrayed the deciding event against a background of spectator vessels - the floating grandstands that follow and have too often interfered with the races.

Another heroic moment was portrayed by Chevalier Edoardo de Martino, among the most sought after marine painters in Europe. In the painting shown in Plate II he captured the moment when, in the tenth defender Columbia beat Sir Thomas Lipton's (1850-1934) Shamrock 1 off Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) dazzled the nation by broadcasting the results from sea with his new invention, the wireless. We know that Martino was present for the match because a sketch he made appeared in the New York Herald on October 5, 1899, but it is not known who commissioned the painting or how it got to the yacht club. However, the low black hull of the steam yacht Corsair III in the center of the scene suggests the financier J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), an avid yachtsman, who was commodore of the yacht club in 1899.

Martino's remarkable knowledge of the sea and its surface characteristics, and his profound understanding of how hulls displace water, are evident here. It is all the more remarkable in that the artist, who was stricken with paralysis of his right side in 1879, could only paint if his right hand was supported. This is one of four paintings by Martino in the yacht club.

As a young Italian naval officer Martino was attached to a South American squadron and soon attracted the interest of the emperor of Brazil, Pedro II, his first patron. By 1894 he had been made marine painter in the ordinary to Queen Victoria, and later to Edward VII and George V. In addition to England, Martino's work is found in Continental and South American museums, the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, the imperial palace in Tokyo, the royal palace in Madrid, and the castle at Doom in the Netherlands.(2)

The America's Cup is contested just offshore on a course marked by buoys, but ocean racing was another interest of the New York Yacht Club. The painting in Plate V depicts the start of the first transatlantic race, in 1866, in the unlikely month of December. It resulted in the loss of six lives when a huge sea swept away an entire watch aboard one of the competing yachts. The race was the result of a wager between George Osgood, the son-in-law of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), and Pierre Lorillard Jr. (1833-1901) over dinner at the Union Club in New York City. Each put up thirty thousand dollars, the winner to take all. In fact the race was won by James Gordon Bennett (1841-1918), the publisher of the New York Herald and the only owner actually on board his yacht during the race. The painting of the start of the race conveys the magnitude of the challenge, for the viewer is almost awash in the gray Atlantic.