A striking and historically attentive portrait of the sidewheel steamer Kennebec, built in 1842. Rendered in crisp profile against a soft, painterly sky and calm Atlantic swells, Cameron’s portrait captures the stately elegance of early American steam navigation.
The Kennebec, identified in bold red lettering on her paddle box, is shown under partial sail with twin smokestacks active - suggesting both the hybrid nature of early steam propulsion and the vessel’s readiness for sea. Flying period flags, including a U.S. ensign and company pennants, she presents as a proud representative of the Sanford Steamship Line, for whom she plied the route between Boston, Bangor, and the summer resorts of Maine. Her design, with a wood hull, 230-foot length, and distinctive “hogging truss,” speaks to mid-19th century innovation tailored to coastwise packets.
Cameron’s style is reminiscent of 19th-century ship portraiture yet refined with contemporary technical precision. This is an excellent example of his work.
This work is oil on canvas and is signed in the lower right. It is housed in its original black frame and retains the artist’s description of the ship on the reverse.
Size:
22 inches tall by 44 inches wide (painting)
26 inches tall by 48 inches wide by 1 inch deep (frame)
Provenance:
Private collection;
Acquired from the above
About the artist:
A Delaware artist, Scott Cameron paints the simple elegance of the America’s Cup races, serene coastal marsh scenes, timeless landscape vistas and historic steamboats in a style reminiscent of the era in which they reigned.
An admirer of Andrew Wyeth and the Brandywine School of painters, Scott has combined the detail and quiet stillness of that School in his landscapes with the Luminist School’s sense of light glowing from within. A soft gentle atmosphere seems to fall over each scene adding to the peacefulness of the setting, and a sense of a time gone by. His America’s Cup scenes capture the action at a moment in time, allowing the beauty of the wind-filled sails to become the central design element of each painting.
Scott Cameron has exhibited his oil paintings in numerous national and regional shows from the Mystic Seaport Museum to solo and group shows in some of the foremost galleries throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.
Favorite painting locations are the waterways and coastal inlets of Martha’s Vineyard and Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the gentle rolling landscapes of rural Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. Meticulous research is behind every historic steamboat and America’s Cup painting...
Category
Late 20th Century American Realist Figurative Paintings
