The Royal Society of Marine Artists, Europe’s foremost society of artists dedicated to depicting tidal waters and the marine environment, has announced the dates of its hotly anticipated Annual Exhibition at Mall Galleries in London.
The exhibition this year will open on 21 September at 10am and run until 30 September at 5pm. An Online Preview of the Annual Exhibition will also go live on mallgalleries.org.uk on 31 August.
The Annual Exhibition will show figurative paintings, hand-crafted prints, sculpture, ceramics and textiles from both RSMA members and carefully selected work from an Open Submission. Marine artists worldwide are invited to submit work which will be curated according to the society’s foremost measure of excellence in representing tidal waters and subject matter connected to the sea and the marine environment.
All of the work to be shown at the exhibition will be available for sale (last year work ranged in price from £500 to £15,000, with £1,600 being the average) with many pieces expected to sell in advance through the Online Preview, as it has in previous years. Several prizes and awards are on offer to exhibiting artists worth £10,000, including the £5,000 BAE Systems Award for the best work capturing the story of British Shipbuilding – People, Ships and Shipyards and the £2,000 Baltic Exchange Award for an outstanding work related to the maritime industry.
John Scott Martin, the RSMA’s president said; “The UK has long been Europe’s leader, and a constant inspiration, when it comes to the discipline of marine art. Being an island, the coast and sea is an integral part of our national identity. Artists have never been too far from it and many of us are drawn to the sea and to artwork depicting it. Since the Royal Society of Marine Artists’ inception in 1939, it has been focused on promoting the finest in figurative marine work. There is no other comparable society in the whole of Europe and, with its aim to bring together the year’s best tidal and coastal artwork, our Annual Exhibition attracts both artists and buyers from across the world.”
There will be around 400 works for sale at this year’s Annual Exhibition, including a selection from the RSMA’s current 60-strong members. Buyers can be assured of the artistic quality and appreciating value of the work on show, thanks to their selection by marine artist peers.
Originally called The Society of Marine Artists, the RSMA’s inaugural exhibition was postponed by the start of the Second World War, and it was not until November 1946 that the long-awaited exhibition took place. Featuring over 100 oil paintings and some 70 watercolours, the exhibition was opened by A. V. Alexander, the new Minister of Defence and former First Lord of the Admiralty. Many fine marine artists, with a national or international reputation, were numbered among the early membership: Montague Dawson, Rowland Hilder, Claude Muncaster, Charles Pears, Norman Wilkinson and Harold Wyllie to name but a few.
In 1966 Her Majesty the Queen granted the Society the title Royal Society of Marine Artists. The Society is firmly committed to the promotion of marine art in its many forms and guises, with the subject matter gradually broadening to encompass not only sea-going vessels, but yachts and dinghies, the coast and sea-shore, harbours, estuaries and tidal rivers – indeed anything that is essentially marine related. The society has a strong association with the Royal Navy and works by early members are held in collections such as those of the Imperial War Museum and the National Maritime Museum.
Members have recorded celebratory events such as the Silver Jubilee Fleet Review of 1977 and the International Fleet Review of 2005, and in 2013 two members were granted permission to paint the new carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth whilst still under construction at the Rosyth Shipyard in Scotland. More recently, two RSMA members have been involved in recording the building of a new frigate HMS Glasgow at BAE Systems on the Clyde in Scotland.
Mall Galleries in London is the UK’s leader in contemporary, figurative art and a visual arts charity empowering artists through a not-for-profit programme of exhibitions and events, prizes and awards, founded in 1961. Managed by the Federation of British Artists, the gallery is run by leading and acclaimed figurative artists who curate the gallery’s collection, organised into annual shows for its famous member societies. It is a powerful resource for experiencing and sourcing figurative art which is both available to buy and endorsed by leading artists.
