Maritime exhibition launches stories from the sea

A FASCINATING exhibition of maritime paintings has been launched — in every sense — at the Port of Cork headquarters.

The display is based on a book, Maritime Paintings of Cork 1700-2000, published to mark the 2005 European Capital of Culture.

The impressive book, co-published by the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, the Port of Cork and Gandon Editions, consists of colour plates that tell the story of the harbour and the River Lee from the 17th century to the present.

More than 80 paintings are reproduced, along with engravings, maps and additional documentary material.

Peter Murray of the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery has written a chronological history of the harbour as well as explanatory notes on each colour plate.

He said that while ships have changed down through the ages, “the conventions of maritime painting render it a genre unto itself”.

Mr Murray cites the similarity between the painting The White Squadron by George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson (1806-1884) and that of Kenneth King’s The Naval Review painted 150 years later.

The ships depicted in the exhibition and the book along with their cargoes and passengers transformed the harbour.

“They also transformed Cork’s position in the development of a modern global economy. Virtually none of the ships have survived, making these paintings all the more significant as a record of an important part of Ireland’s social, industrial and political heritage,” said Mr Murray.

The core of this exhibition is drawn from paintings and prints owned by the Port of Cork Company, while other paintings and prints are loaned by the Crawford Gallery, Cobh Museum, Kinsale Museum and by private collectors.

Those with an interest in commercial, trade and warfare maritime history in Cork, as well as art historians, will be enthralled by the Port of Cork display.

The exhibition continues until the end of July at the Port of Cork headquarters.

The book, Maritime Paintings of Cork 1700-2000, is on sale through the Port of Cork and will be available in bookshops later this week.