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Lot Essay
No French sailing vessel named Gange (i.e. Ganges, the Indian river) has been located in Lloyd's Registers of Shipping, circa 1857, although the vessel portrayed here has now been identified from the Registre Veritas of 1862 as a three-masted barque built at Westbrook, Maine, U.S.A. in 1850. A two-decker registered at Marseilles at 519 tons, she was constructed of oak, tamarack - a type of larch - and pitch-pine and drew 17 feet of water when fully loaded. Operating out of her home port of Marseilles, she was owned (in 1857) by Decugis d'Ycard & fils and although no details of her routes are currently available, her name implies that she was a trader to the Indian sub-continent.
The youngest of Antoine Roux's sons, Francois was nominated 'Peintre officiel de la Marine' in 1876. Working, as he did, for most of his life in the family workshop in Marseilles, his work is similar but, if anything, finished in even greater details. To say that Francois ultimately came to surpass his father's work would be unfair, but his effortless handling of pigment, maturity of style and incomparable degree of skill give his watercolours a surety of hand capable of executing even the most ambitious works.
The Roux dynasty was to influence a whole school of maritime painters and there are examples by all members of the Roux family in museums throughout the world, including The Peabody Museum, Salem and Le Musee de la Marine, Paris.
The youngest of Antoine Roux's sons, Francois was nominated 'Peintre officiel de la Marine' in 1876. Working, as he did, for most of his life in the family workshop in Marseilles, his work is similar but, if anything, finished in even greater details. To say that Francois ultimately came to surpass his father's work would be unfair, but his effortless handling of pigment, maturity of style and incomparable degree of skill give his watercolours a surety of hand capable of executing even the most ambitious works.
The Roux dynasty was to influence a whole school of maritime painters and there are examples by all members of the Roux family in museums throughout the world, including The Peabody Museum, Salem and Le Musee de la Marine, Paris.