Famous Seascape Paintings
The sea in eight paintings: Hokusai's wave, Turner's last voyage, Monet's harbour at dawn and Aivazovsky's storms.
8 prints · printed to order on heavyweight matte paper · framed or unframed
Painting the sea
No subject tested painters more. Turner strapped himself to a mast, by his own account, to see a storm; Aivazovsky painted the Black Sea from memory in a studio and was more accurate than most who painted it from a boat; Hokusai's wave, cut in wood in about 1831, has become the most reproduced image in Japanese art. Monet's harbour at Le Havre at sunrise gave Impressionism its name.
The works in this collection
Hokusai's Under the Wave off Kanagawa; Hiroshige's Naruto Whirlpools; Monet's Impression, Sunrise; Turner's The Fighting Temeraire; Friedrich's The Sea of Ice; Aivazovsky's The Ninth Wave and The Black Sea; Homer's The Gulf Stream.
On the wall
Seascapes are wide by nature and hang best at 24×16 or 36×24 above a sofa, a bed or a bath. The Great Wave is also offered edge to edge and on canvas; the blues of Aivazovsky and Hokusai sit well on a navy or white wall.