The Chesapeake Touch: Where Artists Focus on the Nautical and the Natural

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This region’s eye appeal has not been lost on fine artists who have struck gold in the historic districts that dot the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, focusing, in detail, on those who have navigated the depths and backwaters of the estuary, in both peace and war. Following is a select sampling of four such artists who’ve captured the visual essence of the bay and its inhabitants, everything from waterfowl that strut their natural stuff in search of sustenance to intrepid sailors who harness the bay’s unpredictable breezes and currents for propulsion. Each also offers a study in vintage vessels that illustrated the evolution of nautical progress.

Patrick O’Brien

If ever Tom Freeman had a fellow intensive stickler for historical accuracy, it’s Patrick O’Brien from Baltimore. No, not that Patrick O’Brian—the well-known British novelist who not only spelled his penname differently, but was actually born Richard Patrick Russ. This Patrick is an avid student of “The Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race,” an annual event established in 1990. In October each year, schooners from across the country gather to race down the bay, from the bridge to Hampton Roads in Virginia. The painting here depicts the Virginia, a reproduction pilot schooner based in Norfolk, and the Pride of Baltimore, a reproduction of a 19th century “Baltimore clipper” based in Baltimore.

A favorite historic event for O’Brien is The Battle of the Chesapeake Bay, one of the turning points in American history. “I began by doing exhaustive research to ensure that the painting would be as accurate as possible. I consulted charts and accounts of the action, the journals of admirals from both fleets, and manuals of building, rigging, and handling of 18th-century sailing ships. I also studied the Naval Academy Museum’s dockyard models, which had been built at the same time and in the same shipyards as the actual ships.”

Art and painting were always his hobbies, but it didn’t occur to him make a career out of it. “I got a degree in biology, thinking perhaps I might go to medical school. It was only after graduating that I realized I should be an artist. So, I spent a couple of years in art school and then began freelancing as an illustrator.” 

O’Brien wrote and illustrated 11 children’s books, one of them titled The Great Ships, about famous ships of history. “I took the original watercolor illustrations from this book to the Annapolis Marine Art Gallery, and they agreed to take them on. They sold a few of the watercolors, and then I started doing paintings just for the gallery. That’s how my marine art career began.” O’Brien is now an adjunct professor in the Illustration department at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, “teaching one class per semester since 2011.” 

O’Brien also is firmly established in the stable of fine maritime artists published in Naval History magazine. According to Eric Mills, its editor-in-chief, “O’Brien’s work has a finely detailed, at times downright photorealistic quality, plus vivid color, lighting, exciting movement, all those good things. The sum-total effect manages to wed vivid realism with a sort of mythic grandeur that can really breathe life into a historical narrative.”

John Barber

As Virginia resident John Barber tells us, his mother saw his artistic potential early in life. “She recalled a drawing I did of a whale, spouting water near a tropical island,” all without having ever seen the ocean himself. Barber thought of ingrained images “that somewhere struck a note within me...At age seven, while visiting Cape Hatteras with family, I came upon a rather smallish man wearing a blue beret, standing under an umbrella as he painted the Hatteras Lighthouse and the Atlantic beyond.” Barber remembers being “transfixed by the magic I was witnessing, I still recall the intoxicating aromas of oil paint, turpentine, and salty sea air.”

Having been so inspired by that trip to the Outer Banks and concluding that his love of the sea and all things maritime was innate, Barber credits his high school guidance counsellor and art teacher, Ms. Walton, with prodding him to apply to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for a fellowship. “She strongly suggested that I attend Virginia Commonwealth University (known at the time as the Richmond Professional Institute [RPI]). Ms. Walton insisted that I not study fine art and first try commercial art. She actually said that “no one can earn a livelihood painting pictures.” I worked in the commercial art field for ten years, all along painting maritime scenes with financial success,” Barber recalls. 

Then came a serendipitous meeting with retired U.S. Navy Captain James Wise, himself an accomplished author (with Anne Collier Rehill) of a series of books about movie stars who served in the U.S. military services, beginning with Navy and Coast Guard veterans in Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America’s Sea Services (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997). Following his experiences in commercial art, Barber remembers Wise asking him whether he could see his work. “After telling him of my desire to paint full time,” Barber recalls, “I showed him my work. Almost instantly, Jim decided to form a small company, composed of a financial partner, himself, and me. It would be called Commodore Galleries, and we issued four of my paintings as limited-edition prints, and then another four, then four more. Soon, I was a fully-employed artist. I paid my respects to Jim during his interment at Arlington National Cemetery, and I miss him dearly.”

We asked Barber where he gets his inspiration. “It comes primarily from being out, on, and around the water. When I was at VCU, I went to a house party on Gwynns Island, Mathews County, arriving after dark. This was my first encounter with the Chesapeake Bay. Having been drawn to the shoreline of this little cottage, I walked out onto the pier as the moon rose. What a beautiful sight it was, as I saw boats and ships moving about under that full moon. It was later that I recalled that night and decided to focus my work not on maritime subjects in general, but the bay specifically.”

Barber does meticulous research, and lots of it. We asked just how much preparation is required after he chooses the subject of his next project, and how many of these on average are simultaneously works in progress. “I normally work on one painting at a time,” he tells us. “When I was creating paintings for limited-edition prints, I would choose a subject of more widespread interest, since we printed about 950 in an edition. If I set out to make a skipjack painting, I would call one of the captains on Tilghman Island, such as Ed Farley, and ask if I could go out for a couple of days on board his own skipjack, the Stanley Norman. We would leave the harbor long before dawn and head out to the oyster bars. At daybreak, sails would be set, and a long day of dredging oysters would begin. If artists want to create legitimate work, they must understand the mechanics of what they are painting as well as the aesthetics. Photos and sketches would be made, too. But more important, I absorbed the ‘essence’ of the experience that would later be laid down in oil paint.”

Today, Barber lives in Richmond, is married with two grown sons and daughters-in-law, along with two grandchildren. He spends what he calls his “river time” in Deltaville, Virginia.

Tom W. Freeman

If you ever attended an indoor Navy sports or other public event held at the U.S. Naval Academy’s Alumni Hall, you cannot help but to have seen Tom Freeman’s work. Three large murals at the main entrance, commissioned by the Class of 1961, are Freeman’s renderings of the Vietnam War era: The Marines at the Hué Citadel, Dawn on Yankee Station, and Rescue by USS Barb.

A native of Pontiac, Michigan, Freeman set up shop in his basement and garage and raised his children with wife Ann in suburban Bel Air, Maryland. At the end of the driveway stood a replica blue flag, quoting in white capital letters U.S. Navy Commander James Lawrence in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” Lawrence is quoted as ordering while in command of the USS Chesapeake. Freeman, known worldwide to serious naval historians and art aficionados alike, followed Commander Lawrence’s orders during several bouts with cancer until he succumbed to its effects at the top of his profession in 2015.

The consummate watercolorist when Freeman embarked on his art career, C. G. Evers, advised the budding artist that he was “free to copy or duplicate my style; your own style will emerge from that.” Freeman followed his mentor’s advice to the letter, succeeding, according to prominent naval historians, who have pointed out a common thread in both Evers’ and Freeman’s artwork: the ability of both artists to depict water “so that it really looks wet.”

Freeman’s work appeared on the covers of Boating, Business Week, Popular Mechanics, Reader’s Digest, TV Guide, and the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings and Naval History, as well as book covers for Bantam, Berkley, Dell, Jove, the Naval Institute Press, and Putnam.

As he enjoyed being at or near the top of his chosen profession, the phone rang on Thanksgiving Day, 1986 at the Freeman home. Ann answered, and came to Tom with news that the call was from U.S. Navy Captain Ron Jackson, on the line from the White House. Tom promptly hung up the phone on him. Jackson “called back and asked if I realized what I had just done, then asked whether I had any art prints to hang in the White House mess. I told him I’d do one better and send some original art.” Thus began a long relationship with the White House Historical Association, including use of his Mr. Lincoln’s White House for its holiday greeting cards. Freeman also presented President George H. W. Bush with an original painting of the new aircraft carrier that had been named after him. Freeman later presented his rendition of George W. Bush’s controversial “Mission Accomplished” May 2003 aircraft carrier landing, essentially proclaiming the end of the Iraq War. The question of its precise purpose is still debated.

A year earlier, at the behest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Freeman had presented an original work to Pope John Paul II, depicting Pope Pius IX visiting the USS Constitution at Gaeta, Italy, on August 1, 1849, in commemoration of the first time a sitting pope had set foot on American “soil,” which the ship represented. The artwork remains on display at the Vatican.

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the conversion of the transport ship USS President Warfield (having been renamed the Exodus 1947), Freeman presented his rendering of the rescue of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust—deemed “a symbol of the birth of Israel”—to the Clandestine Immigration and Naval Museum in Haifa. Yet another of Freeman’s paintings, Guest of the King, has hung in the palace of the king of Bahrain since 2012. 

Nancy Hammond

Relatively few artists are known worldwide for their respective singular styles. But one popular local creative stalwart certainly fits into that category. Any enthusiasts will tell you that they can recognize a Nancy Hammond creation from across the room; even her signature itself has risen to that level.

As Hammond annually sells out of her trademark “Chesapeake” posters, she ruminates over what makes her work so recognizable. “Years ago,” she reveals, “I came up with this odd combination of materials to create my artwork—painted cut paper, crayon, and acrylic paint.” One reason, she told us, is that “I like to leave evidence that an artist was there: splashes of paint thrown, freely-formed crayon marks, energized backgrounds.”

A native of the Finger Lakes region in New York state, she spent her formative years on an island in the St. Lawrence River near the Canadian border. “It was a rickety old place with no electricity, a wood-burning stove, and drinking water brought in from the mainland,” Hammond recalls, adding what’s so special to her about the Chesapeake region.

“In the midst of a populated area of nine million people, the bay provides relief and grandeur in our everyday lives. Out in this blue-green world, we’re filled with fascinating wildlife. We come back to our senses.” Consistently dividing her summertimes between Eastport in Annapolis and St. Michael’s on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Hammond stresses that “I have always sought to live near water. And there was the Chesapeake, a giant body of water and way of life too big to ignore, a panorama of endless scenes.”

Hammond still looks at her work as “an artful journey” and gets a “visceral thrill” at seeing the appreciation of her constantly evolving legion of fans. She emphasizes that a bond is always established somewhere along the journey with the people of this region and her art. “My annual posters of Chesapeake are much anticipated, and I still get a little jittery wondering what the reaction will be to the new one. When I think people used to spend all night on the sidewalk to have one, I imagine how happy they are to order them online now.”