Someday scientists may discover the reason why we yearn so deeply for our past. Maybe it’s some as-yet-undiscovered gene hidden in our DNA that sends out secret impulses that compel us to discover from whence we came. Or maybe there is something to all the nonsense about spirits and such, calling us from the beyond. Better still, suppose our high school history teachers had told us the truth before they proceeded to bore us to tears. Maybe history is the map by which we chart our way into the future.
Whatever profound force is at work, most, if not all, of us, at some time in our lives, will feel the urge to peer into a world that once was. Some will climb up into the attic and rummage through the artifacts left by the generations who inhabited the family homestead. Others will spy an interesting antique in a hidden-away shop and wonder about its origins. Others will discover an old cloth-bound photo album filled with cracked black-and-white pictures, or watch a PBS documentary, or find a yellowed newspaper clipping lining the bottom of an old bureau.
It does not matter by what vehicle we make the journey into the past, it only matters that the trip takes place, because, once you’ve been there, you know the way. Accepting that single concept is all you need to do to comprehend. This partly explains the incredible, resounding success of maritime artist John Stobart.
Stobart is widely considered to be the greatest maritime artist alive today. By any objective measure, he stands alone. His original oil paintings sell for more than twice what has ever been paid to any other living maritime artist. They can cost as much as $175,000 and are owned by people such as Charles Gulden of Gulden’s mustard fame, beer tycoon R.J. Shaeffer III, and Thomas Watson, son of the founder of International Business Machines. Stobart’s largest original, a five- by-nine-foot of the sailing ship Henry Hyde, hangs in Dun & Bradstreet headquarters in New York.
Many of his limited-edition prints are sold out within days of being issued, after which they steadily increase in value. There are Stobart prints that sell for more than some contemporary maritime artists can command for an original.
Why? What is it about Stobart’s work that is so extraordinary? Part of it is his unique view of the world’s great harbors. When the 62-year-old artist stands on a wharf, in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Charleston, Boston, or New Orleans, he sees how the waterfront appeared in the glory days of sail. Through the prism of time, he visualizes the famous sailing ship Flying Cloud entering the port of San Francisco after her record passage from New York in 1851, or the David Crockett being towed up the East River. It is all there in prints like the recently released “Mystic Seaport,” which depicts the whaling bark Charles W. Morgan on a moonlit night in the 19th century, moored alongside Chubb’s Wharf in Mystic, Connecticut. On the wharf, splashes of yellow light spill out from gas lamps that illuminate the wood frame shops.
Each painting is a historically accurate re-creation of an actual event in which plans from the original ships, daguerreotype pictures, and old pen-and-ink drawings are used to bring our heritage to life.
But simply because something is unique does not make it extraordinary. Extraordinary means remarkable— something far beyond the ordinary. For example, if you were browsing through an antique shop and you came across a silver bowl unlike anything you had ever seen before, you would say it was unique. If you turned it over and saw Paul Revere’s name inscribed on the bottom, now that would be extraordinary.
To understand why Stobart’s work has entered the realm of the extraordinary, you must know something about his background. Stobart did not come upon success easily. He, like the ships he paints, spent his share of days sailing against the wind. His father, a druggist from Derby, England, found his son’s vocation something of a humiliation. Stobart recalls what it was like choosing a career in art: “You can’t imagine what it was like in those days. My father, and most of the people I knew, thought being an artist simply meant I couldn’t find a job doing anything worthwhile.”
In speaking engagements around the world, he points out that he was enrolled in art school because he couldn’t seem to pass any of the courses in a more traditional curriculum. But there was something about art that grabbed hold of him immediately. By the time he graduated from the Derby School of Fine Art, he had accumulated quite an array of fundamental skills. He studied the masters in museums throughout Europe while acquiring the ability to draw and name every bone in the human body, assemble them into a full skeleton, and then add all of the tendons and muscles.
He then won a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Art. But even there, among other artists, he did not fit the mold. While most of his schoolmates were growing beards and scuffing about in sandals, Stobart showed up to class wearing a tie and a bowler hat.
What set him apart then is precisely what would eventually propel him to the top of his profession. John Stobart was a realist. Whether by instinct or in direct response to the way his family and friends reacted to his chosen profession, his first goal was to make a living from art—a good living. “I can remember walking down the street with my father,” he says. “If he saw a old nail in the gutter he would bend down and pick it up. We didn’t have much money, and that nail could come in handy some day.”
The turning point came the day he sold his first painting to a small gallery in London. It was just a little painting of the Thames River, but it brought in enough money to feed the young student for two weeks. The cold cash resting in the palm of his hand was real. It was tangible. It was proof that what he did had genuine value. After art school, he traveled by ship to South Africa. Along the way, he passed the time drawing detailed sketches of the many harbors where the ship stopped.
Always attuned to the concept of earning a living from his talent, he came upon an idea to transform these sketches into a few dollars. When he returned home, he approached several shipping lines about their plans to add new vessels to their fleets of cruise ships. He acquired the original plans to these ships, then, using his original sketches, he painted them as they would look in the harbors they would eventually frequent. The shipping lines snatched up the original paintings and hung them in their board rooms. From copies of the originals, the companies produced brochures to promote their vessels before they ever left the shipyard.
Later, Stobart came to the United States with $200 to his name. Again, he chose the course less traveled. The art world was filled with landscape artists, but there was not one person re-creating the wonderfully romantic era of American history when sailing ships dominated the harbors of every great coastal city. He rummaged through libraries, museums, and historic archives, collecting enough documentation to re-create, with surprising accuracy, how a harbor must have appeared on a specific date. He even found the original plans and log books of famous vessels that were in the harbor on that day in history.
Stobart speaks passionately about what he believes his work represents: “Art isn’t about creating photo realism. Art occurs when a painter views a scene and imparts his own interpretation in the painting. You can’t do this kind of work by locking yourself up in a studio and painting from photographs. You have to go out into nature and feel the harbor today. You have to see how the sky reflects in the sea, watch the way the waves roll, and learn to put that onto the canvas.”
Every Stobart harbor scene takes the viewer back to a time when wharves teemed with life—sailors, laborers, merchants, and just ordinary folk. In “Boston, Long Wharf by Moonlight in 1865,” a cosmic blue light makes its way through puffy clouds and reflects in the water collecting on the cobblestone wharf. Warm yellow light from a dockside shop illuminates four men who strain to roll barrels up onto a horse-drawn cart. You can feel the weariness in their bones as they labor into the night.
Such is the sensation that soothes the eyes in all of the more than 80 limited- edition prints that have been released by Stobart during the past 13 years. They are sold in galleries he owns in Boston, Nantucket, Hilton Head Island, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., as well as through 120 authorized dealers around the world. A Stobart print generally costs about $600 when first released, and many have increased in value—some now sell for $6,000.
Which brings us back to the analogy of the silver Revere bowl. It's easy to assume that what makes the bowl and Stobart’s work special is that both were produced by recognized leaders in their chosen professions. But that is not the point at all.
What is extraordinary about a Stobart is a characteristic it shares with our imaginary bowl. The instant you discover Paul Revere’s name on the bowl, something eerie happens. There is almost a subliminal chill that shivers down your spine. You are suddenly connected to the past. You hold in your hand something real and tangible that has transcended the generations. Looking at a John Stobart painting creates a similar sensation.
There is something about a Stobart that is real—so real it evokes an emotion. Maybe it’s his way of using moonlight to create a dreamlike aura. Or maybe it is the way the gas lights along the wharves actually seem to be casting illumination. Or it could be the stunning detail that tricks the senses. Whatever the reason, a Stobart is as real as a cloth-bound photo album filled with black-and-white photos of people that all look like you.