#shipwreck

Nobody commissioned this one. It was, from what I've read, a deliberate swing at getting noticed — built out of long conversations with two men who lived through the wreck, plus a scale model of the raft set up in the studio. The disaster itself was a national scandal, mostly because the captain had got his command through connections rather than any skill at sea.

Supposedly he painted the sea from memory indoors rather than out in front of it, and turned out thousands over a lifetime — storms and wrecks by the dozen, selling about as fast as he could make them.

Sailors reckoned waves arrive in runs and the ninth one is the one that finishes you — supposedly that's where the name comes from. He was a navy painter by trade and, from what I've read, worked from memory in the studio rather than out in front of the water.

Wrecks at sea sold well, and this one got engraved as a print not long after, which is supposedly how most people at the time would have run into it rather than in any gallery.