THE BARK WASHINGTON, 1860. ARTIST UNKNOWN.
In early 2025 the “Americana Week” preview exhibition at Christie’s auction house featured a painting reminiscent of one in the OHS collection. Whaler Attacking a Sperm Whale by Charles Sidney Raleigh, depicts the drama and violence of hunting sperm whales, just like our painting The Bark Washington, which was last on view at Village House in the summer of 2023. Both paintings capture the power of the whale as it fights for its life, churning up waves, toppling the whalers’ rowboats, and flinging the men into the sea. (In an unusually dramatic twist of fate, The Bark Washington was stolen in 2001 and, due to some good luck and the persistence of the FBI, eventually returned unharmed to OHS; otherwise, it might have wound up on the wall of an auction house, too!)
As for the rest of the Americana auction preview, time and again many of the pieces shown were reminiscent of ones in the OHS collection. An Antonio Jacobsen portrait of a tugboat had pride of place in a room full of notable American artists. Jacobsen, a prolific painter known for his flat and exacting style of depicting 19th century boats, is well-represented in OHS’s collection; we are fortunate to have four(!) Jacobsens, all on display at the Webb House Permanent Maritime exhibition. And in a gallery full of 19th century paintings Christie’s described as sublime, we thought of East Marion’s own romantic painter Joseph Henry Miller. We have an excellent example of his work, depicting brooding clouds over a grassy ravine, hung in Village House.
We are heartened to see that the OHS collections’ status as world-class is confirmed!
