Clearly, in marine painting there is no lack of opportunities. In its various branches it offers to the artist room for the most divergent activities and it allows him a spacious field for the exercise of his powers. If he aspires to conquer difficulties they are there in plenty, difficulties which have to be met with courage and handled with discretion. If he is content with simple tasks there are many which will occupy him agreeably and be well worth working out. If he is a serious student of nature’s manifestations they are set before him in profusion, and the whole array of her mysteries is paraded for his instruction; and if humanity is his subject, all the actors in the drama of sea life are there to inspire him with their doings and to stir his imagination with the record of their achievements. Always the contact with the sea brings him something fresh that leads him into new trains of thought and suggests to him new ways of applying his technical skill; but always the demand is made upon him that he should put forth the whole of his effort to reach and maintain the highest standard of artistic practice. There is no place in marine painting for the man who, taking the line of least resistance, seeks by compromise and convention to gloss over his want of knowledge and tries by superficial cleverness of handling to divert attention from the incompleteness of his analysis. An artist of this sort had better let the sea alone and choose something simpler and less abounding with pitfalls for his inexperience.
This series of reproductions of paintings by artists who have given particular attention to marine painting in its various aspects has been made as comprehensive as possible so that it may illustrate adequately a subject capable of the widest application. Examples belonging to different periods have been included to show what have been the changes and developments during a term of nearly two hundred years, and what has been the nature of the appeal of the sea to men of widely differing temperaments. The conventional arrangement, the poetic transcription of fact, the realistic study, the decorative interpretation, and the frank expression of the modern idea are all presented and are available for intelligent comparison. The capabilities, too, of marine painting are made clear, and the extent of opportunity it affords to the serious student of art. There are illustrations which have a specially instructive significance because of the technical knowledge of the subject displayed in them; there are others which are interesting on account of their imaginative quality; and there are others again which reveal the inspiration of the sea life and reflect the spirit by which it is guided. All these have their part in the record of British marine painting, and are both valuable historically and worthy of consideration for artistic reasons.