International studio (47.1912)

INTERNATIONAL
• STUDIO
VOL. XLVII. No. 185 Copyright, 19)2, by John Lane Company JULY, 1912

A PAINTER OF NAVAL ACTIONS
BY JAMES BARNES
u The work of Carlton T. Chapman
as a painter and illustrator requires no
introduction to the American public. His open
wind-swept spaces of the ocean, wide sweep of
boundless horizons, silver grey fogs, rock-bound
coasts and peaceful harbours have been seen at
many galleries and exhibitions—at this he has
shown himself past-master. But to his work as
a marine painter has been added the gift of rep-
resenting with a truth, a feeling and a spirit, that
few have obtained, the doings of man in combat
on the sea.
In the days of wind and sail there was a quality
of romance, a picturesqueness, that now is lost
forever. All this Mr. Chapman has caught and
portrayed in his paintings of naval actions. The
plunging bows, the shattered yards and spars,
the shot-riddled sails, the flare and smoke of the
broadside—he brings it all back to us. As some-
one expressed it, in looking at his picture of the
Battle of Cape St. Vincent, “it is all there but the
sound.”
See Nelson’s gallant wreck of a proud fighting-
ship with but one mast standing, all aflame from
the fire of her great guns, edging in for still closer
action, with two great ships of the enemy that
seem to cringe from the desperate onslaught.
Here all is motion; the confusion of tangled cordage
and splintered bulwarks, all the blare and burst-
ing of the fight—“the noise of the Captains and
the shouting.” Even the turbulent sea, tortured
with splashing shot, is part of it.
Mr. Chapman’s painting suggests all that is
going on in the crowded ’tween decks, the cheer-
ing, half-naked men at hand-spike, lanyard and
sponge and rammer—in all his battle pictures
nothing seems motionless, and nothing is im-
possible. For the sake of composition he sacri-
fices not a whit of reality. The direction of the

wind that backs the topsail of one vessel flat
against the mast propels the full-bellied main
course that is urging the victorious enemy across
her bow. The taut weather shrouds and braces
show the strain on topmast and topgallantmast.
Knowledge of naval architecture and sailor
craft must be at the artist’s finger tips to make such
pictures real to sailors, and but a glance of the
tutored eye is necessary to show that Mr. Chap-
man has blended both knowledge and paint craft
in his composition.
It is often a moot question whether ar1*should
ever represent the intensely dramatic—it is
claimed that the portrayal of a situation or the
telling of a story is a fictitious aid. It is all a
matter of the assisted imagination. The “giving
out” of the real /eeZmg of a picture, be it a calm
landscape or a dramatic moment arrested and
placed upon the canvas, depends not so much on
what is painted there as upon what is brought to
the painting itself by the beholder. The end is
the same whether it is a landscape that makes one
draw long, equal breaths of satisfaction and con-
tentment, or whether the blood is stirred and the
pulses heightened by the representation of move-
ment and intense action. As one gazes at Mr.
Chapman’s canvases there is felt a stir of the
blood—they present the dramatic moment and
tell the story, and this belongs to art.
Look at the painting entitled The SpanishMain.
Against the background of silvery mist a vessel
of the seventeenth century lies anchored off a
rocky shore. Her loosened sails hanging from
the yards are ready to be spread. The whole
composition suggests a tale of mystery—the at-
mosphere is full of it. And note in the painting
entitled The Conquerors, bluff-bowed ships they
are of the same romantic age—the age of discov-
ery and conquest, of buccaneers and pirates and
the huge fleets of a hundred sail. Invincible, in-
deed, they look with their storied galleries and
sloping quarter-decks; their mast-heads gay with

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