AFA Summer 2021

Antiques & Fine Art 81 2021 Michele Felice Cornè (1752–1845), Ship America on the Grand Banks, about 1800. Oil on canvas, 39¾ × 56 inches. Peabody Essex Museum; Gift of Mrs. Francis B. Crowninshield (1953, M8257). The first artist in the United States to declare a specialty in marine subjects was Michele Felice Cornè. Cornè left Naples on Elias Hasket Derby’s ship, Mount Vernon, in 1799, bound for Salem, Massachusetts. Upon arrival, he became a kind of artist-in-residence to the local shipowners, painting vessel portraits and historical and allegorical images in oils and gouache, leading the Reverend William Bentley to comment, “Mr. Cornè continues to enjoy his reputation as a painter of ships. In every house we see the ships of our harbour delineated for those who have navigated them.” Cornè’s Ship America on the Grand Banks depicts the first of four ships so named by Salem’s Crowninshield family between Independence and the War of 1812. It was the last British war prize taken by colonial privateers during the American Revolution. Cornè portrays the renamed ship in the international waters of the Grand Banks fishing grounds off of Newfoundland amid French and British flagged vessels. The history of the ship and its prominent American flag, set within a competitive commercial setting, evokes pride in the new nation and its emerging international profile.