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

James E. Buttersworth
The Clipper Ship "Flying Cloud" off the Needles, Isle of Wight, c. 1859-1860
Private Collection


Flying Cloud was a clipper ship that set the world's sailing record for the fastest passage between New York and San Francisco, 89 days 8 hours. The ship held this record for over 100 years, from 1854 to 1989.[2]


Flying Cloud was the most famous of the clippers built by Donald McKay. She was known for her extremely close race with Hornet in 1853; for having a woman navigator, Eleanor Creesy, wife of Josiah Perkins Creesy who skippered Flying Cloud on two record-setting voyages from New York to San Francisco; and for sailing in the Australia and timber trades. More on Flying Cloud

The Needles is a row of three distinctive stacks of chalk that rise about 30m out of the sea off the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, United Kingdom, close to Alum Bay, and part of Totland, the westernmost Civil Parish of the Isle of Wight. The Needles Lighthouse stands at the outer, western end of the formation. Built in 1859, it has been automated since 1994.

The formation takes its name from a fourth needle-shaped pillar called Lot's Wife, that collapsed in a storm in 1764. The remaining rocks are not at all needle-like, but the name has stuck. More on The Needles

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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01 Marine Work, GEORGE SAVARY WASSON's USS Brooklyn at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, With Footnotes, #320

GEORGE SAVARY WASSON (American, 1855-1932) USS Brooklyn at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, c. 1901 Oil on canvas 30 x 45 in. Private collect...