This exhibition celebrates the work of some of Britain's greatest maritime painters, including Frank Bramley, Stanhope Forbes, James Clarke Hook, Colin Hunter, Charles Napier Hemy and John Brett. In the later nineteenth century, many painters worked on the coast, studying the movements of the sea and the experience of the fishing communities, emphasising the boundlessness of the ocean or monumentalising events in the lives of the fishermen and women. The pioneer of such painting in Britain was James Clarke Hook (1819-1907), who travelled all around the coastline from the 1850s onwards, seeking out places where tourism had not yet penetrated and depicting the lives of his models with sympathetic understanding. The exhibition includes a selection of work by Hook, together with iconic Newlyn works such as 'The Health of the Bride' by Stanhope Forbes and 'A Hopeless Dawn' by Frank Bramley.

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