01 Classic Works of Art, Marine Paintings - With Footnotes, #18 E

James Edward Buttersworth, 1817 - 1894

U.S.S. CONSTITUTION (OLD IRONSIDES) OFF SANDY HOOK, circa 1870
(3 MASTER FORTY GUNS)

Oil on board

8 by 10 inches. (20.3 by 25.4 cm)

Painted .

USS Constitution is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy, named by President George Washington after the Constitution of the United States of America. Launched in 1797, Constitution was one of six original frigates built in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts, at Edmund Hartt's shipyard. Her first duties with the newly formed U.S. Navy were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War.

Constitution is most famous for her actions during the War of 1812 against the United Kingdom, when she captured numerous merchant ships and defeated five British warships: HMS Guerriere, Java, Pictou, Cyane, and Levant. The battle with Guerriere earned her the nickname of "Old Ironsides" and public adoration that has repeatedly saved her from scrapping. She continued to serve as flagship in the Mediterranean and African squadrons, and circled the world in the 1840s. During the American Civil War, she served as a training ship for the United States Naval Academy. She carried US artwork and industrial displays to the Paris Exposition of 1878. More on USS Constitution

James Edward Buttersworth (1817–1894) was an English painter who specialized in maritime art, and is considered among the foremost American ship portraitists of the nineteenth century. His paintings are particularly known for their meticulous detail, dramatic settings, and grace in movement.

Buttersworth was born in London, England in 1817, to a family of maritime artists, and studied painting with his father, Thomas Buttersworth Jr., who was also noted for the genre. He moved to the United States around 1845, and settled in West Hoboken, New Jersey (now Union City, New Jersey), and also maintained a Brooklyn studio in 1854. He returned to England in 1851 for the Race for the Hundred Pound Cup that took place on 22 August 1851. His sketches and paintings of that yachting competition provide the definitive record of events in that benchmark season of sailing.

Buttersworth’s paintings of the 1893 Vigilant vs. Valkyrie II Cup match, done one year before his death, completed the chronicling of America's Cup races by oil painting just before the advent of successful photographic imagery. He was inducted into the America's Cup Hall of Fame in 1999. About 600 of his pieces survive today, which are found in private collections and museums all over the United States. More on James Edward Buttersworth

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