Ship Ahoy

This painting has been formerly incorrectly attributed to Stanhope Alexander Forbes but stylistically it is closer to the work of Alexander M. Rossi (fl. 1870-1903). He was a painter of genre and portraits who lived in Preston and London and exhibited between 1870 and 1902 at the Royal Academy and Suffolk Street. Many of his paintings depicted the frolics and antics of well-dressed Victorian children at the seaside. He frequently used the device seen here, where a pier or breakwater gives a sense of perspective out to sea, and yet there is a sense of immediacy as the central character is situated prominently in the foreground.