Artist Louis Auguste de Sainson experienced this terrifying storm in New Zealand waters aboard the Astrolabe in 1827. As captain Jules Dumont d’Urville later described: “All we knew was that we were surrounded on every side by danger and felt that a few more violent jolts and our masts would come down.”

‘Storm clouds, Blythburgh, Suffolk’ is typical of Margaret Stoddart’s growing interest in impressionism and painting outdoors while based in England between 1898 and 1906. The atmospheric conditions of the impending storm above Blythburgh have been rendered directly using wet washes of colour. Stoddart travelled widely, taking sketching trips to France, Italy and throughout Britain, often seeking out picturesque villages such as Blythburgh as her subjects. Stoddart enjoyed living at St Ives, Cornwall. The town’s reputation as a plein-air (open air) artists’ colony made it a magnet for New Zealand artists including Frances Hodgkins and Dorothy Richmond, who visited Stoddart there in 1902. (Brought to Light, November 2009)

John Wilson Carmichael, son of a Newcastle upon Tyne shipwright, went to sea as a boy and trained as a shipbuilder before becoming a leading maritime and landscape painter. Here he commemorates a famous 1813 British victory in a naval battle that occurred just outside Boston Harbour, following America’s 1812 declaration of war. The conflict left many dead and wounded, including the captain of the British frigate HMS Shannon.

(Out of Time, 23 September 2023 – 28 April 2024)