Since the colonial period, the Atlantic Ocean has operated both as a barrier between America and Europe and as a conduit for international exchanges of peoples, goods, and ideas. It spurred commerce and enterprise that was the basis for both national economic activity and personal fortune. The activities in America’s great harbors and port cities also supported the nation’s cultural development, prompting the rise of schools of maritime and landscape painting, as well as portraiture.

The exhibition "The Coast & the Sea: Marine and Maritime Art" in America explores these themes and the breadth of experiences through which artists and their audiences engaged our coastlines, while simultaneously highlighting substantial developments in American artistic currents. With fifty-two paintings and ten maritime artifacts dating from the eighteenth- through the early-twentieth centuries, the exhibition illustrates the sublime drama of the oceanic environment; the importance of America’s early naval battles; breathtaking vistas where water, land, and light meet; and depictions of the men and women who animated Northeastern port cities.

Visit InCollect.com to read the full marine paintings article.