A Sea Ghost

Painting height: 45.7 cm
Painting width: 71.1 cm
Frame height: 72 cm
Frame width: 97 cm

During their honeymoon in 1887, George and Mary Watts travelled by ship around the coast of Italy. One day a summer fog drifted over them. In her diary Mary records being able to see a stranded ship that “loomed strangely through the fog”. The memory of this encounter inspired Watts to paint this composition. An evocative example of Watts’s ability to work in close tonal harmonies, this work has often been compared to Turner’s sea paintings and Whistler’s landscapes.

In the second volume of The Annals of an Artist’s Life Mary Watts details the inspiration of this painting during her honeymoon with George in the Mediterranean in 1887. She wrote,

A summer sea fog drifted about us one day, through which Corsica was suddenly revealed like opal and pearl, and then lost again. The disabled ship loomed strangely through the fog, and the two pictures, Off Corsica and The Sea Ghost were painted later from the impression of that day [1].

Based upon this entry it is clear that Watts sought to portray the atmosphere of a ship emerging from but still obscured by fog in this seascape in this work- an approach which Watts also utilizes in later works. 

This work demonstrates a change by Watts to depict seascapes and the ethereal. Critics at the time seemed disagreed about this new direction by Watts.  While one writer noted that he preferred the earlier work by Watt such as the painting “The Wounded Heron” while others praised Watts by describing this work as “atmospheric” and “dreamlike” and by comparing it to French Impressionists [2]. Watts himself clearly felt a strong appreciation for this work as well as he decided to keep it in his studio with other works rather than sell it [3].

Dudkiewicz points out how this work is also reminiscent of other themes focus on ethereal or ghost ships in literature and art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though there is no evidence that any these works influenced this painting. She highlights The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge, Rokeby by Sir Walter Scott,   and even The Flying Dutchman by Wagner as examples of such works [4]. Moreover, she highlights that nineteenth-century writers commented on the similarity of this work to French Impression, others have compared this painting works such as The Fighting Temeraire by Turner or Nocturne: Blue and Silver- Cremornre Lights by Whistler [5].

Staley also compares this work to other nineteenth-century seascapes but with a key difference. Like Dudkiewicz he notes that the ship in fog is similar to works by Turner such as Whalers (boing Blubber) Entangled in Flaw Ice as well as The Fighting Termerire [6].  However, Staley highlights that unlike those works this painting by Watts takes place within a dreamlike atmosphere rather than portraying a real event [7]. Based on these ideas this work can be seen as adhering closer to the ideas of Symbolism rather Realism or other late nineteenth-century artistic movements.

Footnotes:

[1]   Mary Watts, The Annals of an Artist’s Life Volume 2, page 83.

[2]  Julia Dudkiewicz, “65. A Sea Ghost, 1887,” G F Watts Victorian Visionary (ed. Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant), page 240.

[3]  Julia Dudkiewicz, “65. A Sea Ghost, 1887,” G F Watts Victorian Visionary (ed. Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant), page 240.

[4]  Julia Dudkiewicz, “65. A Sea Ghost, 1887,” G F Watts Victorian Visionary (ed. Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant), page 240.

[5]  Julia Dudkiewicz, “65. A Sea Ghost, 1887,” G F Watts Victorian Visionary (ed. Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant), page 240.

[6]  Allen Staley “20 A Sea Ghost 1887-1889,” Painting the Cosmos: Landscapes by G.F. Watts (ed. Allen Staley and Hilary Underwood), page 47.

[7]  Allen Staley “20 A Sea Ghost 1887-1889,” Painting the Cosmos: Landscapes by G.F. Watts (ed. Allen Staley and Hilary Underwood), page 47.

Text by Dr Ryan Nutting