An impressive luminous view of the famous RED JACKET Clipper at sea, this painting is a masterful composition by the recognized leader of the genre, Montague Dawson. The emotional content of the rose-edged clouds in the late afternoon sky glows while the clipper gracefully transverses an ocean that Dawson has stroked into a serene calm. The vast horizon is one of the most distant we have seen in his paintings.
RED JACKET is an extreme clipper that deserves as much acclaim as any ship that ever sailed. No less an authority than naval architect William A. Fairburn declares that she was "the best as well as the handsomest of all the clipper ships built." Built in Rockland, Maine by "Deacon" George Thomas from the design of Samuel H. Pook of Boston in 1853, she sailed for owners Seccomb & Taylor out of Boston on a maiden Liverpool run. She was so popularly received that the British "White Star Line" hired her for an extensive charter in their English-Australia route. For 25 years she set sailing records, often averaging well over 300 miles a day sailing, and outperformed the most acclaimed of the clipper ships. Since she was America-built, the British chose to downplay her efforts, and since she was in British service, the Americans squabbled over her records. Here Dawson does her justice in a beautifully rendered remembrance in oil.
