John Stobart (British, 1929-2023) "Straight Wharf, Nantucket"

John Stobart (British, 1929-2023)
Inspired by tradition, John Stobart serves as our historian and guide to life along the water. To the viewer, it seems as though Stobart stood a century ago along the ports and harbors he recreates for us. We can almost feel the effects of the weather and time of day and we learn about our history and our heritage through wonderfully descriptive narratives that have been compared to stories by Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad.
It was as a young art student that Stobart first experienced the work of John Constable and Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot. Constable’s oil sketches motivated Stobart to focus on simplicity and clarity in his work. Corot’s paintings of outdoor subjects and architecture inspired Stobart’s art. In these paintings, Stobart also found a quality of light he had never before seen. The work of these artists deeply affected Stobart and prompted him to define his own artistic style.
When he completed his academic studies, Stobart traveled by ship to his father’s new home in South Africa. While aboard the Braemar Castle, he realized that his artistic future lay in a passion for ships and the sea he had discovered at eight years old. He painted The Braemar Castle and quickly sold it to the Union Castle Line which led the way to his paintings being prominent in boardrooms across England and North America.
For ten years, Stobart divided his time between England and Canada. Stobart learned that artists had recorded only a few nineteenth century American ports and harbors. Newly inspired, he took a six-month sabbatical to learn about this subject. He later began the body of work that now documents the development of American ports.