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Creator:
Charles Brooking, 1723–1759
Title:

A Two-Decker on Fire at Night off a Fort

Date:
ca. 1740
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
9 5/8 x 11 7/8 inches (24.4 x 30.2 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Inscribed, lower left: "Aged 17 Years"

Signed, lower left: "C Brooking [P??]"

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1976.7.9
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:
B1976.7.9FR
Subject Terms:
boats | brigs | castle | fire | flames | fort | lifeboats | marine art | night | ocean | people | sea | seascape | ships | shipwreck | smoke
Access:
Not on view
Note: To make an appointment to see this work, please contact the Paintings and Sculpture department at ycba.paintings@yale.edu. Please visit the Paintings and Sculpture collections page on our website for more details.
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:252
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Charles Brooking’s use of the term “fort” denotes the castle’s purpose as a military stronghold, and yet the building seems eerily abandoned, its gray-green stone melting into the glassy sea. The tranquility of the scene is interrupted by a burning ship being evacuated not far off shore. The haunting image juxtaposes the ideal function of a fort with its visible emptiness and contrasts the symbolic strength of a castle with the ephemerality of fire and human existence. The burning ship embodies the sublime in both scale and sudden disaster, simultaneously evoking fear and awe in a viewer. This is Brooking’s earliest known work, painted and signed when he was seventeen. A talented marine painter, he died at age thirty-six, leaving behind a collection of atmospheric seascapes.

Gallery label for Art in Focus: The British Castle - A Symbol in Stone (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-04-07 - 2017-08-06)

Art in Focus : The British Castle - A Symbol in Stone (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-04-07 - 2017-08-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Spreading Canvas - Eighteenth - Century British Marine Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2016-09-09 - 2016-12-04) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 40-41, N590.2 A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Eleanor Hughes, Spreading Canvas : Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2016, p. 178, fig. 104, ND 1373.G74 S67 2016 (YCBA) [YCBA]

The British Castle : A Symbol in Stone, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2017, p. 16, cat. 10, V2722 (YCBA) [YCBA]


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