A wonderful realistic portrait of the Penobscot, a mid-19th century coastal sidewheel steamer, rendered in Cameron’s hallmark marine portrait style - technically meticulous, historically informed, and visually serene. Executed with crisp linework and a soft, luminous palette, the ship is shown in profile navigating calm Atlantic waters under both steam and sail, her red paddle box emblazoned boldly with her name.
Commissioned in 1843 by Menemon Sanford’s Steamship Line and constructed in New York, the Penobscot was a near twin to her sister ship, the Kennebec, but became especially prized for her seaworthiness. Measuring 228 feet in length with a 48-foot beam and twin 14-foot paddlewheels, she carried schooner rigging fore and aft, providing the added stability necessary for coastal and offshore passages.
Initially assigned to the Maine coastal excursion routes, she would later be reassigned to the elite New York–Philadelphia line and eventually sold and renamed Norfolk for pre-Civil War service along the southern coast.
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 Cesare Ricciardi Art
