John Stobart (American) (1929- )
John Stobart was born in Leicester, England on December 29, 1929. It was as a young art student that Stobart first experienced the work of John Constable and Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot. Constable’s oil sketches told Stobart that he, too could develop simplicity and clarity in his work. Corot’s paintings of outdoor subjects and architecture inspired Stobart’s art. In these paintings, Stobart also found a quality of lights he had never before seen. Stobart earned a highly coveted scholarship to England’s oldest and most prestigious art academy, the Royal Academy Schools in London. The artist completed another five years of studies in the very academy where Constable studied.
When he completed his academic career, Stobart traveled by ship to his father’s new home in South Africa. While aboard the Braemer Castle, Stobart realized that his artistic future laid in a passion for ships and the sea he had discovered at eight years old. Stobart painted the Braemer Castle and quickly sold it to the Union Castle Line. Soon, the artist was on a tack that would carry his paintings of modern ships into boardrooms across England and North America. Stobart has taken on the task of painting nineteenth century American ports and harbors. Stobart was selected to show in the Kennedy Galleries. His paintings and limited edition prints are collected around the world and seen by visitors of the Peabody Museum in Massachusetts and the Portland Museum in Maine. John Stobart’s WorldScape I and II video series have enabled him to teach painting to a vas t television audience. Stobart has also educated readers through his books on maritime painting. The Stobart Foundation continues to sponsor young painters who are influenced by the history and tradition of the open-air painters.
SAN FRANCISCO: VALLEJO STREET WHARF
USS CONSTITUTION signed lithograph