Lot 5175
Gordon Hope Grant (America, 1875-1962), Schooner at Sea
Lot Details & Additional Photographs
Sight size 18 3/4 x 16 1/4 in.; Frame dimensions 25 1/2 x 23 1/2 in.
Gordon Hope Grant was an American painter, illustrator, printmaker, and author best known for his etchings and paintings of marine subjects. Born in San Francisco, California, Grant developed a lifelong fascination with the sea after a four-month voyage around Cape Horn at age thirteen while traveling to Scotland for his education. He studied at the Heatherley School of Fine Art and the Lambeth School of Art in London before beginning his career as a newspaper illustrator for the San Francisco Examiner and later the New York World. He also served as a combat artist for Harper’s Weekly during both the Boer War and the Mexican Revolution and produced illustrations for magazines, books, and popular fiction throughout his career.
Although he painted portraits, city streets, harbors, beaches, and other subjects, Grant achieved his greatest acclaim as a marine artist. His reputation was firmly established after 1906 when reproductions of his painting of the USS Constitution (“Old Ironsides”) were widely distributed to raise funds for the preservation of the historic vessel. Grant and fellow preservationists successfully lobbied Congress to designate the ship a national monument, and his celebrated image of the Constitution later entered the White House collection, where it has hung in the Oval Office. Grant received numerous honors from the American Watercolor Society and was a member of organizations including the Society of Illustrators, Salmagundi Club, Allied Artists of America, New York Society of Painters, and the American Federation of Artists.
Toning and spotting to the sheet, not examined outside the frame.
