In this early work by contemporary marine master John Stobart, the artist holds the center with a strong presentation of a Fife Yawl, NAVARA. At her helm is owner Alan Miller, a Scotsman who raced yachts internationally. He purchased NAVARA from Archie MacMillian, who had built her in his "Fairlie Yacht Slip" in 1956 and sailed her as his own for 15 years. Stobart has performed this painting the very year Miller purchased her, and undoubtably, directly for the yacht's new owner.
A crisp day on the water has a regatta of five yawls headed along the west bank of the Firth of Clyde away from Glasgow as a Naval Cruiser heads along the coast from the port of Dunoon. The mountainous Cowal Peninsula shows touches of summer green and why the region is easier accessed by water than land. Once outside past the Isle of Arran, with the winds that come of the North Sea upon the Irish Sea, is another story. Only the bravest fo the best sailors attempt to sail those waters.
It is interesting that the Scottish yachtsman commissioned this work of the artist after he had moved to America. Certainly Stobart to this day keeps business relations with people in the "Mother Country", but his primary artistic focus turns to historic sail and the harbors of yesterday. The Fife family, from where this yawl type is named, built many important ships and yachts out of the same yard that MacMillian bought after World War II.
