“The ultimate test of a marine artist ... is his ability to depict the sea in all its moods; that is the supreme accomplishment. The marine artist can be of great service in preserving our maritime history when he does his homework and strives for historical and technical accuracy.” This powerful comment, inspired by the work of acclaimed marine artist Carl Evers, was written by non-artist Harold Huycke, now a marine surveyor.
Reviewing the 1980 Northwest Marine Art Exhibition in Sea History, Huycke noted, “To this beached seafaring reviewer, nothing on view compared to the impact of Carl Evers’s ‘Full Load of Crude’—a deep-laded tanker, bucking through rough seas ...”
Carl Evers’s interest in and fascination with the dynamics of the wind and the sea combine to produce convincing and exciting marine paintings that seem to come to life. Evers sees virtually endless possibilities for depicting the movement of the water and the ships that ride in it. But whether the moment captured is calm or chaotic, it is depicted with vitality and realism.
Evers is not an old salt, but he has had an ample amount of sea time—in the North Sea, the English Channel, the Caribbean, and a six-week trip from Sweden to San Francisco. His powers of observation and his unending study of light, reflection, and water movement are evident in his painting. They clearly establish him as a marine artist whose realism speaks forcefully to the viewer.
Evers notes, “There can never be too much research for my subject matter. The conditions that existed at that time—the wind, the light—are important factors in making my paintings depict accurately and emotionally what kind of a day it was. I see the painting complete in my mind before I put pencil to paper. If I couldn’t see the picture in my mind, I couldn’t draw it!
“There is absolutely no place for the abstract in my approach. I make a complete pencil drawing, including the design of the waves and the details of the ship. Even the sky shading is indicated. The pencil preparations are so vivid they have proven salable as ‘finished’ art.”
Carl Evers was born before World War I in Dortmund, Germany. His father was a British marine engineer, and his mother a German artist and illustrator. His ability as an artist became apparent before he was ten years old, but the development of his talent was the result of his persistent, self-directed apprenticeship.
He worked at a printing plant in London for 18 months, learning that trade and refining his ability to draw. His first formal art training was made possible by an uncle who provided his tuition for a year’s study at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. Then, convinced that he could make a living as a free-lance artist, Evers began making the rounds of advertising agencies. His portfolio was strong enough in early 1931 to get him hired by a New York firm and sent to Stockholm. He stayed there for 16 years, as a successful automotive and industrial illustrator for Ford, Packard, Chrysler, Jeep, and other accounts.
In 1947, his career took an abrupt turn. Evers felt that England and the Scandinavian countries were becoming welfare states, and recalls, “I felt an individual couldn’t forward himself in a socialist country.” He then made two major decisions: to go to the United States and to pursue his lifelong interest in marine art.
Instead of a six-day ocean trip to New York, Evers opted to take a six-week trip on board a freighter, via the Panama Canal to San Francisco. He relished this opportunity to further study, sketch, and refine his understanding of water movement and wave development. The enterprising Evers bought the passage for himself and his mother by providing sketches to the ship owners.
“The timing couldn’t have been better,” says Evers. “That winter passage involved sailing with icebreakers to get around Scotland, and weathering a hurricane off the Bay of Biscay on the way to the Azores.” Evers was one of the few passengers who didn’t suffer from seasickness.
Evers recalls that to qualify for immigration at that time, one had to be in good health and free of debt, have enough money to start out, and be able to speak English. None of these were problems for Evers and after arriving in San Francisco, he traveled by train to New York.
“No one knew me,” Evers recounts, “but in talking to a Grace Line captain en route, I learned the names of shipping people to contact in New York.”
“It was Admiral Edmond J. Moran, of Moran Tug and Towing Company in New York, who was the most instrumental in furthering my career as a marine artist. He gave me a pass for all the piers in New York City. I sketched the lines he served, doing the tugs and ships in great detail. For newer ships still on the drawing boards, I worked from blueprints. Paintings made from these sketches were used on Moran calendars and the Moran quarterly magazine until 1963.” This led to work for a number of major shipping lines—Grace, Cunard, Matson, United Fruit, Farrell, and others.
Recognition of Evers’s marine paintings came quickly and resulted in a 13- year assignment, painting port scenes for Philadelphia Electric. General Dynamics engaged him for 36 major paintings. Reader’s Digest called on him to provide both cover and inside art during the next 15 years, and the covers of Sir Francis Chichester’s books, published by Ballan- tine, featured Evers’s paintings of his three Gypsy Moth boats. Articles about his talent appeared in numerous publications, including American Artist, Nautical Quarterly, and Watersport. The Society of Illustrators gave Evers a one-man show, and in 1975 Ballantine-Bantam published The Marine Paintings of Carl G. Evers, a book that is now out of print and considered a collector’s item.
Evers describes his association with the U. S. Naval Institute as “one of the most satisfying and professionally rewarding” of his career. In 1962, he began the first of what was to become a large collection of fine art paintings of naval subjects for the Institute. He painted covers for 20 issues of Proceedings, and many of them are offered for sale in USNI’s print program. More than 50,000 of Evers’s ship prints have been sold since first being introduced in 1964. His painting of the historic Monitor- Merrimac Battle was published on the cover of the 1985 Proceedings supplement—“The U. S. Navy Yesterday.”
Proceedings readers have been a consistently enthusiastic audience for Evers’s work and many privately commissioned paintings have resulted from this exposure to Institute members. Although he no longer accepts commissions, this work and the sale of USNI prints has led to many lifelong friendships in the naval and maritime community.
Evers paints his watercolors out of his love and fascination for the subjects. Above all, his work speaks to the seafarer who has been there. They evidence complete mastery of ships in their working environment. He has never had to promote his own career; the quality of his work speaks for him.
Carl Evers now lives in Southbury, Connecticut, with his wife, Jean, an editor of an area weekly newspaper. He is affiliated with the Greenwich Workshop, Incorporated, which has published 11 of his most recent ship paintings in limited edition prints. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Marine Artists and is an honorary lifetime member of the U. S. Naval Institute.
One of Evers’s longtime admirers is Earl Gillette, Sr., who is now completing 25 years of sea duty with the National Weather Service. He spoke for many fans of Carl Evers when he commented, “One of the first things that struck me about Evers’s Proceedings covers was the reality of the water. ... no matter what the wind condition, he always got everything right. You can almost see the ship roll and pitch. . . . you’d have to have been there to get that feeling.”