Lot 145: A Royal Navy Fourth Rate heeling in the breeze off Plymouth Sound as she heads down the Channel with other warships and coastal craft nearby

Charles Brooking (1723-1759) A Royal Navy Fourth Rate heeling in the breeze off Plymouth Sound as she heads down the Channel with other warships and coastal craft nearby oil on canvas 30 x 36 in. (76.3 x 91.4 cm.)

76.3 x 91.4 cm.

Born in Deptford in 1723, Charles Brooking is generally considered to be the most gifted of the English marine artists working in the eighteenth century, His early years were spent in East Greenwich close to the dockyards of Deptford and Woolwich. Apprenticed to his father, a painter and decorator, it is likely that it was he who encouraged his son to take up marine paintings. Although influenced by the work of the van de Veldes, Brooking was indebted to the early Dutch maritime painters, the purity and clarity of his tones and glazes having more affinity to the work of Simon de Vlieger. Brooking's accurate depiction of ships and his understanding of sail-handling and seamanship suggest that he must have spent some time at sea. His subtle observation of light and atmosphere and the vagaries of the English weather anticipated by many years the achievements of Constable and the English artists of the Romantic movement. Brooking accepted commissions for a number of naval actions of the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739), although these were skirmishes and not large scale fleet actions. His favoured subjects, however, were of ships of the Royal Navy heeling in the breeze and of those portraying fishing boats in river estuaries. He died prematurely at the age of thirty-six. His paintings are held in the National Collection at Greenwich, the Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut; the Tate collection and many private collections worldwide.