John Stobart signed "Baton Rouge" ~ 1984 ~ 334/750

Description: John Stobart (British, 1929- )Baton Rouge: The Anchor Line Steam Packet “City of Baton Rouge” Arriving in 1881 offset lithograph, pencil signed l.r., numbered 334/750 visible image measures approximately: 31 3/8" W x 21 1/4" Hframe measures approximately: 40 3/8" W x 30 3/4" H Please note that shipping charges are inclusive of insurance, payment processing and carrier fees. About the Print The blast of a steamboat’s whistles from around the bend in the river could be guaranteed to draw spectators to the town wharf, but often one riverboat looked and sounded much like another. No one, however, could mistake the gleaming new Anchor Line steam packet for any other vessel. In the painting, I imagine she’s in the charge of pilot Horace V. Bixby, and sitting in the pilothouse as a guest is his old friend and former ‘cub’ pilot, Mark Twain. At the stopover in Baton Rouge, en route from New Orleans to St. Louis, Twain immediately commented that the new Louisiana State Capitol, a whitewashed castle with turrets, looked out of place. The celebrated writer was enthusiastic, however, about the magnolias in the Capital grounds: “lovely and fragrant with their dense, rich foliage and huge snowballed blossoms.” Twain’s biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, later wrote, “the Anchor Line steamers were the acme of Mississippi steamboat building and they were about the end of it. They were imposingly magnificent, but they were only as gorgeous clouds that marked the sunset of Mississippi steamboat travel.” In this view, the local ferry to Port Allen, on the left, pursues an upstream course to avoid the log raft headed south to the sugar region. The great sugar plantations are still there today – across the river and to the southwest of the city. About John Stobart John Stobart was born in Leicester, England on December 29, 1929. His father enrolled him in Derby College of Art in September 1946. Stobart achieved high honors and a county scholarship to London’s prestigious Royal Academy Schools, being one of only four students accepted that year. Realizing fairly early in his student days that an essential part of becoming a professional artist would be to achieve sales of his work, he began to exhibit small landscapes painted in the countryside outside London and along the river Thames. Upon graduation from the R.A. Schools, Stobart embarked on a voyage to South Africa to visit his father. It was during this voyage that John Stobart realized new horizons. If he could borrow plans for new vessels being built, he could best take advantage of all that he had carefully observed in these exotic ports. The original paintings would be suitable for boardroom displays, and the prints could be used on calendars that each shipping company sent out annually. Within two years his paintings of ships in foreign ports were decorating some fifteen shipping company boardrooms in London. Stobart immigrated to Canada in 1957. For the following ten years, he developed the interest of shipping companies along the St. Lawrence River. Always hoping to paint the era of merchant sail. It was late in 1965, that John Stobart first visited the United States with four paintings of sailing ships. The day he arrived in New York the Wunderlich family who had founded, and then owned, Kennedy Galleries, offered him a one-man show. Over the subsequent fifteen years, the Wunderlichs gave him seven one man shows, all virtual sell-outs Seeing his large new originals disappear into private collections throughout the United States, Stobart initiated the idea of publishing limited edition prints of his more important works. Stobart established Maritime Heritage Prints, Inc. in 1976 feeling that the highest quality of production could only be assured if he himself remained in control. While continuing his popular series of paintings of the historic ports of America, Stobart has, since 1987, returned to the practice of painting contemporary outdoor subjects whenever possible. S1.

Price: 1200 USD

Location: Chicago, Illinois

End Time: 2025-01-03T01:12:51.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD