The Marine Art of Geoff Hunt: Master Painter of the Naval World of Nelson and Patrick O'Brian

The colossal weight of a ship of the line, the sea right before my eyes, Geoff Hunt brought that world into focus like the Hubble brought us distant galaxies. He places the viewer into at live, real world of light and color, and then he does what? With great generosity he opens his studio to us and shares a bit of his method for approaching this spectacular subject. I've started the Aubrey Maturin series for the fourth time now and the images bring that world of 200 years ago to life. The movie fills in the faces, even Killick's unfortunately, but Geoff Hunt has rigged me up a bosun's chair and hauled me aboard a hansom fleet, one carefully painted ship at a time.

I am in no way an artist, but I know what I like: Representational art. You can keep your Rembrandt and your Picasso -- I'll stick with Charles Russell and the Wyeths and others like them. In fact, I generally prefer illustration to "fine art" and that's where Hunt got his start, laboring in London art agencies, designing packaging and advertising campaigns, and finally moving into book covers. He has become most famous as the creator of all the cover art that graces Patrick O'Brian's now-classic series of sea novels about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, but he's also responsible for the covers of the more recent series by Julian Stockwin. In fact, Hunt grew up nowhere near the water, in a family notable for its lack of naval connections or history. But from childhood, the graceful lines of ships "just seemed right." Unlike paintings of buildings or locomotives, you can't just set up your easel on a passing wave to paint a picture of a ship at sea. Nearly all marine painting, therefore, is done in the studio and depends heavily on technical drawings, reference books, and ship models in order to get the light and the wind right, not to mention the evolutions a sailing warship passes through to get from here to there. Hunt also insists on historical accuracy of location, especially in portraying naval engagements. All of this rigor leaves the viewer of his paintings with a decided sense of time-traveling. But beyond that, while his subjects come largely from two centuries ago, his methods do not. He's an experienced photographer as well as a trained graphic artist and his perspectives and goals are entirely modern. Unlike some artists, Hunt also enjoys explaining how he works and where his ideas come from. In fact, in addition to a couple dozen plates with accompanying explanatory text and historical notes, he includes five case studies with developmental drawings and photos. This large-format volume will please any armchair sailor.

Anyone who enjoys marine art will really appreciate this book, not just for the great work by Geoff Hunt, but for the insights into his work. One of the most fascinating tidbits was his attention to the detail of the actual angle of the sun on the sails in the picture "Victory races Temeraire" at their location on 21 October 1805! The case studies of 5 of his works provides wonderful information about the genesis, development and completing of a great piece of art.

Geoff Hunt is possibly the most talented marine artist since Montague Dawson. This book contains dozens of prints of his most beautiful paintings, which in many cases are complete with earlier versions from line drawings to colour sketches. There are many descriptions of how the paintings came to be created, from who commissioned each one to the ideas the artist had about how to execute the commission and how he turned it real. Most of the subjects concern warships of Nelson's era, though there are a few drawings and paintings of more modern warships or civilian ships. in particular, there are many paintings of the ships of the line in which Nelson served, many of them illustrating real incidents from Nelson's service career. The book also contains a large number of paintings illustrating ships and scenes from the Jack Aubrey novels written by Patrick O'Brien. (In fact, many of the ships which appear in these novels were real historical units which are faithfully reproduced in the book covers and other paintings included - in Hunt's words, "In most cases Patrick press-gangs real ships into his novels.") The book also includes a number of studies of United States sailing ships, including the first US ship of the line (America) being built, pictures of the USS Constitution, and "General Washington's Wolfpack." Much as it pains me to mention a gentleman who was born in Whitehaven (the town where I live) but subsequently came back commanding an enemy squadron and raided the town, this book also includes some beautiful pictures of naval scenes from the life of John Paul Jones. Geoff Hunt manages to make ships of the line and frigates from the era of fighting sail incredibly beautiful, but he also goes to some length to make his pictures realistic, even consulting the original logbooks of the ships concerned when he is trying to capture real feats of seamanship. He also consulted the original signal code books before painting the signal flags flown by his warships, so they spell out appropriate messages in the codes of the period. If you are attracted to pictures of ships from the era of fighting sail, you will love this book.