Robert Cleveley was one of many marine artists hired by the navy to create paintings which were sold to the elite in British society. Many similar images were converted into prints and purchased by the general public (N. Tracy, Palette 5, 72). Two ships are portrayed in the center right of the image, a rowboat between them.
William Anderson's Frigate is an example of many marine images which portrayed British ships simply existing on the sea. The British flags prominently displayed on both frigates ensure that the observer realizes the connection between this scene and the British nation.
This vignette of the Lycidas sinking off the coast of England illustrates the connection made between the sea and other worlds.
William Daniell's hand-colored aquatint illustrates the difficulty of maintaining control of the sea once it had been, in a sense, claimed by Britain's perception of itself as a great maritime power. This difficulty is mirrored in the struggle of the men attempting to haul a rowboat ashore and in the labored leaning of the distant vessels against the storm.
George Cruikshank (1792-1878), who began his long and influential career as a caricaturist and book illustrator at the age of eight, working in his father’s shop, produced a steady output of political prints for over sixty years, although he focus had shifted to book illustration by the mid 1820’s. His works, which include more than 6000 graphic designs, ranged from portraits (some satiric, others not, depending on the tastes of his patrons and employers), attacks on politicians, the British monarchy, and Napoleon, illustrations for children’s books, and advertising for the Temperance Movement. By the second decade of the nineteenth century he was admired as the leading British caricaturist.
The choice of subject in this piece, a crumbling medieval monastery situated on the border between Scotland and England, can be interpreted as a temporally and spatially liminal place; the presence of the ruins collapses not only the present and the past, but also the national identities of the English and the Scottish.
This image depicts the ruins of Hadleigh Castle, near Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. The two remaining towers of the castle stand in the left register of the picture place, a scrawny tree between them. In the lower left corner, a shepherd boy carrying a staff is walking up the incline toward the ruins. A dog follows close behind him, looking up at the sky.
