The marine paintings of James Edward Buttersworth

Magazine Antiques, July, 1994 by Richard B. Grassby

The English-born marine painter James Edward Buttersworth, who did the majority of his work in America, rightly enjoys a high reputation among collectors of American marine painting. The nature of his talent, however, is rarely made explicit.[1] Since Buttersworth was a prolific artist whose painting appears to have been his sole means of support, his work is uneven, although his finest canvases (most of which are in private collections) stand out for their originality.

Buttersworth was born in London in 1817 into an artisan family. His father may have been Thomas Buttersworth (1768-1828?) or more probably the latter's son, also Thomas (1794?-1842), both marine painters. James married Ann Plowman (d. 1886) in 1838 and worked in London until he immigrated to New York city, probably in 1847. In 1849 he bought a cottage in the village of West Hoboken, New Jersey (now part of Union City), where his wife also acquired property. After her death he lived with his eldest son, also James (b. 1838), in West Hoboken. The latter, an engraver by trade, may also have worked in oils and helped his father.

Since he almost certainly learned his trade from the two Thomas Buttersworths, James's early work imitates their formalized styles, regularized seas, smooth modeling, chiaroscuro, and monotonous palettes. His literal approach to painting and his later treatment of weather--atmospheric effects, moisture-laden clouds, and lively seas--owe much to English and Dutch paintings and engravings. Still later he may have seen and been drawn to the work of the American marine painters Robert W. Salmon (c. 1775-c. 1842), Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865), and William Bradford (1830-1892). Eventually he distanced himself to develop his own motifs and techniques, often repainting the same subject many times until he was satisfied with the result. His storm scenes, for example, can be arranged in chronological sequence as he experimented with variations of skies and waves (see Pl. III). These scenes are stylized melodramas, with the visual impact supplied by sharply polarized colors and stark contrasts of light and shadow that illuminate only the crests of the waves, the sails, and the masts.

Buttersworth is often admired for his precise detail and realism, and he certainly brought out the intrinsic visual interest of his subjects through the meticulous selection of minute details of activities on both the principal and subsidiary vessels (see Pls. IV, XI). His ship portraits are accurate, as was expected by those who commissioned them, and his seas and skies are usually convincing. However, his realism could only be achieved by contrivance. The ships in his storm paintings, for example, would in reality have been invisible. Moreover, he had little interest in topography, and he suppressed and manipulated the observed facts (see Pls. I, VI), such as altering the proportions of the vessels to achieve dramatic intensity.

One of Buttersworth's major strengths is his firm grasp of linear structure and his tight, crisp, and economical draftsmanship. His ships are three-dimensional and always have bold, solid silhouettes (see Pls. I, IX). An unusual gift for miniaturization allowed him to compress a complex scene into a small space. In Plate IX, for example, there are close to fifty vessels moored around the tip of Manhattan, all depicted with extraordinary clarity.

Buttersworth recognized the virtues of traditional composition. His clipper ships (see Pls. I, II, VI) are built like slightly off-center pyramids, with the rounded and curvilinear shapes of their hulls acting as counterpoints to the verticality of masts and sails. Alternate bands of sunlight and shadow play across the water (see Pl. V) and zigzag patterns link vessels and delineate space. A low shoreline or horizon with striated clouds accentuates the length of the vessels seen broadside, while to avoid monotony, other vessels on different tacks are foreshortened.

In his better paintings, Buttersworth varied the composition, reversing the conventional juxtaposition of a dark foreground and light middle ground and adopting a circular, L-, or Z-shaped composition instead of centering the action. Sometimes full sails with their flat reflections echo the horizon line, and sometimes the vessels sail diagonally from corner to comer to emphasize speed. The oscillation of waves introduces a rhythm that unifies the composition (see Pls. IV, IX). Highlights of the same pigment provide visual analogies, as when the color of a buoy is reminiscent of the color of flags on various ships or ashore.

Characteristic of Buttersworth's mature paintings is his mastery of both linear and atmospheric perspective. He creates the illusion of distance by progressively diminishing the scale of secondary vessels and by exploiting the relative clarity of objects in the foreground and far distance. To accommodate both the Washington and the Hermann in a single canvas (Pl. XI), Buttersworth de-emphasized their bulk by placing them nearly at the horizon. The low vantage point, deep foreground, cool light, empty sky, and calm, uninterrupted sea create an eerie sense of infinite space.