The Royal Society of Marine Artists (RSMA), the foremost society of artists dedicated to depicting tidal waters and the marine environment, has announced the dates of its hotly anticipated Annual Exhibition at Mall Galleries in London. This year’s exhibition will open on Thursday, September 19th, at 10 a.m. and run until Saturday, September 28th, at 5 p.m.
Britain is an island nation; its frontiers lie where the sea begins. The sea touches us all in its power and beauty and offers an infinite variety of subjects for the artist’s attention. This year’s Annual Exhibition features the whole world of the sea: great sailing ships, the darkened waters of war, casual and carefree beach scenes, and images of working vessels on rivers and oceans.
John Scott Martin, the President of the Royal Society of Marine Artists, said, “The tradition of marine painting includes many of the greatest names in British art. Of the artists represented at this year’s exhibition, some may in the future be listed historically as nationally and globally important.”
The Annual Exhibition will show figurative paintings, hand-crafted prints, sculpture, ceramics and textiles from both RSMA members and carefully selected work from an Open Submission. Marine artists worldwide are invited to submit work which will be curated according to the society’s foremost measure of excellence in representing tidal waters and subject matter connected to the sea and the marine environment.
The majority of the work to be shown at the exhibition will be available for sale, and many pieces are expected to sell in advance through the Online Preview, as they have in previous years. Several prizes and awards are on offer to exhibiting artists.
The RSMA’s inaugural exhibition was postponed by the start of the Second World War, and it wasn’t until November 1946 that the long-awaited exhibition took place. The exhibition featured over 100 oil paintings and some 70 watercolours and was opened by A. V. Alexander, the new Minister of Defence and former First Lord of the Admiralty.
Among the early members were many fine marine artists with a national or international reputation: Montague Dawson, Rowland Hilder, Claude Muncaster, Charles Pears, Norman Wilkinson, and Harold Wyllie, to name but a few.
In 1966, Her Majesty the Queen granted the Society the title “Royal Society of Marine Artists.” The Society is firmly committed to promoting marine art in its many forms and guises, with the subject matter gradually broadening to encompass not only sea-going vessels but yachts and dinghies, the coast and seashore, harbours, estuaries, and tidal rivers—indeed anything that is essentially marine-related.
The society has a strong association with the Royal Navy, and works by early members are held in collections such as those of the Imperial War Museum and the National Maritime Museum.
Members have recorded celebratory events such as the Silver Jubilee Fleet Review of 1977 and the International Fleet Review of 2005. In 2013, two members were granted permission to paint the new carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth whilst still under construction at the Rosyth Shipyard in Scotland.
Mall Galleries in London is the UK’s leader in contemporary, figurative art and a visual arts charity empowering artists through a not-for-profit programme of exhibitions and events, prizes and awards, founded in 1961.
Managed by the Federation of British Artists, the gallery is run by leading and acclaimed figurative artists who curate its collection, which is organised into annual shows for its leading national art societies. It is a powerful resource for experiencing and sourcing figurative art that is both available to buy and endorsed by leading artists.
Work can be purchased online from Mall Galleries’ website here: https://www.mallgalleries.org.uk/, or in person at the exhibition.
Lead image: Geoff Hunt, Sea Cloud off Corsica, dawn, Oil, 56 x 76 cm