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Creator:
Francis Danby, 1793–1861
Title:
Shipwreck
Date:
ca. 1850
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
12 1/2 x 16 inches (31.8 x 40.6 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.200
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:
B1981.25.200FR
Subject Terms:
birds | boat | clouds | lifeboat | marine art | men | ocean | sea | ship | shipwreck | sunset | waves (natural events)
Access:
Not on view
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:710
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Francis Danby had a passion for boat-building and indulged in this activity as a serious hobby from the 1830s until his death while living in the port town of Exmouth. This romantic image dates from the end of the artist’s career when he was producing marine paintings and perhaps also reveals, to an almost exaggerated degree, the influence of J. M. W. Turner. As a listing ship with a broken mast succumbs to the winds and waves, its crew seeks safety in a longboat, thus emphasizing the futility of human ambition in the face of the overwhelming power of sublime natural forces.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016

Behold the Sea (Yale Center for British Art, 2003-06-14 - 2003-09-07) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Eric Adams, Francis Danby, varieties of poetic landscape , Yale University Press, New Haven, 1973, pp. 126, 183, no. 67, fig. 86, NJ18 D199 A32 + OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christie's Sale Catalogue : Fine English Pictures : 17 March 1967, Christie's, March 17, 1967, p. 42, lot 159, Sales Catalogues (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 78-79, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Seascapes : Yale Center for British Art., , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1977, p. 3, no. 47, V 1909 (YCBA) Vertical File [YCBA]


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