Francis Swaine
1725 – 1782
The Morning Gun
Medium:
Oil on Copper
Category:
Dimensions:
15.1(h) x 20.2(w) cms
Framed Dimensions:
20.5(h) x 25.5(w) cms
Signed:
Signed lower right: 'FSwaine'
Paired with:
Essay:
The marine artist Francis Swaine was much influenced by Peter Monamy who was also his teacher for a time. He married Monamy's daughter, Mary, in 1749 and had two children, one of whom they named after his grandfather. Monamy Swaine was to become a marine painter in his own right. Charles Brooking was another contemporary and a close friend of both Swaine and Monamy, although much of his work is more obviously influenced by Willem van de Velde the Younger. Certainly these three painters employed the formula used by van van de Velde to great success but all display a considerably more informed knowledge of English shipping and its Navy.
Swaine enjoyed a considerable reputation in his day and exhibited regularly at both the Free Society and the Society of Artists exhibitions from 1762 until his death in 1782. He chiefly sent studies of shipping in calm and stormy seas, and harbour views, and naval battles, often on a small scale.
Francis Swaine has been confused with his father, also called Francis Swaine, who was a Messenger for the Navy but who died in 1755.
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In the first work in this pair Monamy has painted an English two-decker in choppy waters. The captain has wisely had the lower hatches closed to stop the decks flooding in the waves. The ship flies the red ensign and passes a Dutch hoy on the left.
In the second work a British Admiralty yacht fires her guns in a salute. The ship appears to be an anchor with its sails slack. Sailors in a rowboat are hurrying towards the vessel while men aboard scamper to prepare for their arrival.
On occasion Swaine would reuse the same larger ships in his compositions with small variations the swapping in and out of other elements such as jetties, rowboats, other nearby ships, and the presence or absence of land. A similar two-decker ship to our own appears in a work in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (ID: BHC1055). Another work with yacht closely resembling the yacht in the second picture was sold by Rountree Tryon Gallery.
Provenance:
Chapman Bros., Chelsea, labels verso (no. 2019)
Private collection, UK
