Over the centuries, the hazards and pleasures of seafaring, the high drama of the mythic whale hunt and the beauty of the many exotic whaling ports around the world have attracted highly accomplished artists and printmakers to whaling subjects.
As the repository of the world’s largest and most comprehensive permanent collection of whaling prints, the New Bedford Whaling Museum is staging a classic whaling prints exhibition showcasing the benchmark masterpieces in the museum’s collection. Opening on February 27 and running through the year, the exhibition traces highlights of the genre from Dutch and German foundations in the Seventeenth Century to French, British and American masterworks of the Nineteenth Century and to examples from Japan and the American Twentieth Century.
“This exhibition brings together for the first time in many years an important part of the world’s visual record of whaling throughout the centuries,” said New Bedford Whaling Museum President James Russell.
Drawn entirely from the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition includes approximately 80 prints, primarily European and American etchings, engravings, aquatints and lithographs, spanning the period 1582‱930. These are being supplemented and placed into a broader, international context by a sample of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, influential American book illustrations, Native Alaskan ceramics and works on paper and other artworks from the permanent collection, including some of the original oil paintings, watercolors and drawings on which the prints were originally based, and a variety of decorative objects that were inspired by the prints.
Organized and written by Dr Stuart M. Frank, the museum’s senior curator, the show is divided into five sections that provide historical context and geographic focus. Among the prints from “The Dutch Golden Age” is a somber engraving from the 1630s by Magdalena van de Pas, one of the few women ever to do a whaling scene.
Notable among the several important prints and paintings in “The British Go Whaling” section are the works of William John Huggins, one of the most accomplished marine painters of the Nineteenth Century.
The exhibition also showcases Moby Dick author Herman Melville’s four favorite whaling prints, all by French marine artists. Two of the four are quite rare and seldom seen; one exists only at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. “Along the Pacific Rim” samples prints by Japanese and Eskimo artists whose work exemplifies alternative pictorial means to represent their respective indigenous whaling traditions.
The museum is at 18 Johnny Cake Hill Road. For more information, 508-997-0046 or www.whalingmuseum.org .
