Endearing art: Father and child and the sea
This article was updated on 14 June 2023.
Art depicting mother and child is ubiquitous. Understandably so. Mothers should be praised and honoured for the many sacrifices they make for their children. Artworks with a father-and-child motif are much less common, especially from before the 20th century, even though fathers often exert a great deal of influence on their offsprings. Indeed, the ones with the sea as backdrop are relatively rare.
Marine Café Blog pays tribute to all good fathers with the following endearing works of art. Click on the images to magnify them.
I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
— Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum (translated from the Italian by William Weaver)
An Algerian man and boy looking across Bay of Algiers, 1887
Watercolor and gouache on paper
Anders Zorn (Swedish, 1860–1920)
Courtesy of WikiArt: Visual Art Encyclopedia
A young child helps a fisherman pull on the oar of his boat,
Etching
Etched by Léopold Flameng (French, 1831–1911) after painting by Émile Renouf (French, 1845–1894)
Courtesy of Wellcome.org
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence
At Sea, 1883
Oil on canvas
Albert Edelfelt (Finnish, 1854–1905)
Courtesy of Gotesborgs Konstmuseum.
Fisherman and his daughter, before 1913
Oil on canvas
Hans Heyerdahl (Norwegian, 1857–1913)
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Man and child at the beach, c. 1864
Lithograph
Hendrik Adriaan Christiaan Dekker (Dutch, 1836–1905) after painting by Jozef Israels (Dutch, 1824–1911)
Courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
~ Barista Uno
