Catalog entry

Commentary

One of four sister ships, the side-wheel passenger steamer "Britannia" was built for the newly formed Cunard Line and placed in service in 1840. Her registry length was 207 feet, beam 34.3 feet, and gross tonnage 1,156. Her first crossing, from Liverpool to Boston via Halifax, was made in two weeks, ending in a festive reception and Boston’s granting of a steamship terminal, rent free, for twenty years. (1)

While the painting is commonly dated 1842, a newspaper account indicates that it may be the one made by Lane in the previous year for "Britannia’s" captain, Captain Cleland, and put on public display prior to the latter’s return to Liverpool. That painting commemorated the steamer’s stormy crossing in April of 1841. In August 1841 the Boston Transcript announced that a Lane painting of the "steamship Britannia during the most terrific gale she ever encountered" was on view at Oakes Music Store in Tremont Row.

On arrival in Liverpool, it seems very likely that Captain Cleland showed the painting to the public as he had in Boston, and also likely that the port’s marine artists—including Samuel Walters, then regarded as one of the finest—would have wanted to see it. In such a circumstance, it seems likely that Walters would have taken notice of the dramatic pose of "Britannia" in less-than-realistic seas and under a nondescript cloud formation. (2) In July of 1842, Walters was painting a vessel portrait of the Boston packet ship “Nonantum,” then loading in Liverpool for her return trip to Boston. Painted possibly for the ship’s owners, but more likely her captain, “Nonantum” is depicted with all sails furled, except her main topsail, which is shredded by gale winds, as she rides out a storm as violent as that in Lane’s depiction of "Britannia." In the left background we see "Britannia" (or a sister ship) in a reverse image of what Lane depicted. The treatment of the heavy seas and stormy clouds is altogether more vivid and realistic than in Lane’s effort. Walters’s brushwork is more delicate and realistic in his treatment of wave contours and foam, while a more dramatic sky focuses light on the packet ship and the seas surrounding it. (3)

Whether or not Walters intended this painting to be a lesson for Lane, the differences in treatment of sea and sky in the two "Britannia" paintings suggest that Lane saw the "Nonantum" painting, got the message, and took Walters's lesson (or example) to heart.

It is useful to note that while Lane was able to sell his first "Britannia" painting to a shipmaster, he could not sell his second, more vivid, version (Cunard Liner "Britannia", 1842 (inv. 259)) to the vessel’s owners. A shipmaster can view with pride a depiction of his ship riding out a bad storm, but a shipping agent must consider the sales appeal of such an image to prospective passengers.

– Erik Ronnberg

References:

1. Paul Forsythe Johnston, Steam and the Sea (Salem, MA: Peabody Museum of Salem, 1983), 61–65.

2. See “Historical materials: Publication” below.

3. Daniel Finamore, et al., Across the Western Ocean: American Ships by Liverpool Artists (Salem, MA: The Peabody Essex Museum, 1995), 18; (essay by A.S. Davidson), 48.

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