Master of the Wharves

August 5, 1830. Having done all my usual 'duties at the office, I thought I would go down to see how the pictures by Salmon would sell. They are all of them very pretty, but I held in exceedingly well until the close, when one came up which I could not resist, and immediately repented of the act.

--Charles Francis Adams

Fortunately for Adams, it was too late. The auctioneer's hammer had al ready fallen, and the painting was delivered in due time to its new owner. "I was confirmed of my opinion of its merit," noted the crusty diarist judiciously on Sept. 24. Posterity agrees with his evaluation. In the 1830s, a maritime scene by Robert Salmon (see color) brought around $30 apiece. Today, Salmons sell for between $10,000 and $15,000. A recent exhibit of 93 canvases at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass., organized with the help of Dartmouth Art Historian John Wilmerding, drew some 8,000 visitors, and resulted in the rediscovery of 30 Salmons by dealers and Boston families.

An Eye for Reality. To be sure, Salmon is esteemed by 20th century Brahmins for slightly different reasons from those which made him Boston's most fashionable marine painter of his day. Having plied his trade for 30 years as a relatively unknown maritime artist in Liverpool and Scotland, Salmon emigrated to Boston in 1828 at the age of 53. He found it the center of youthful America's bustling maritime commerce. Prosperous merchants commissioned portraits of their stately brigs and packets, much as doting mammas demand likenesses of their children.

Salmon, described as "a small man, unmistakably Scotch, a man of very quick temper," soon had all the commissions he could handle. The Boston Daily Advertiser praised him because "his views are always correct, seeming like the present reality of the thing represented." His literalness appealed to Boston's practical Yankees, and until 1840, when he dropped from sight, his client roster included virtually every merchant family in Boston.

A Touch of Genius. The names of the ships that Salmon sought to immortalize are mostly forgotten, but his views of the waterfront retain their honesty and vigor. For his backdrops, he rarely ventured farther north than Nahant or south beyond Squantum, and his finest canvases detail the disciplined confusion of the wharves in Boston's central harbor. Beyond being a realist, Salmon also had a touch of genius. He was the first painter to bring English landscape techniques to the New World; in fact, his style was much imitated by New England artists. Says Dartmouth's Wilmerding: "Anyone with an eye could see that he had the talent of an artist.

He could infuse his scenes with the quality of light."

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