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Reflections-Gwynn's Island (1999)
Oil on linen, 15" x 30"
Julian and Shelton Rowe, 61 and 71, unload the roundstern deadrise Darnell after fishing their pound net in the early morning. Gwynn's Island, Virginia, is where Barber first fell in love
with the Chesapeake. |
The Chesapeake Bay Skipjack was never meant to be a work of art. This sturdy and
swift shallow-draft wooden vessel served as
the workhorse of the commercial oyster industry on the bay. With a V-shaped deadrise, centerboard hull, and simple, single-masted two-sail sloop rig, the skipjack was cheap and easy to build. Many were built by "rack of eye," without consulting any drawn plans.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, about 1,500 skipjacks skimmed the bay, dredging millions
of bushels of oysters destined for tables around the country or local canneries. In 1865, Maryland legislators had passed a law that oysters could be dredged only while under sail-a decision made to preserve the oyster population. |
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Still, the oysters' numbers declined and so did the fleet, with the exception of a brief resurgence in skipjack building after World War II. By the 1960s, the skipjack seemed destined to become a relic.
But these humble workman's boats were about to find a champion. |
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John Barber, then a young art student at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, was attending a gathering of friends on Gwynn's Island when he stepped outside and walked onto the dock. He watched in awe as the moon rose over the Chesapeake Bay. "I'd never really known the Chesapeake before," John Barber said, but now he was entranced.
After graduation, an employer of the artist invited Barber aboard his Maine-built, wooden "Block Island" ketch. Sailing with skipper John Nesbit, Barber got to know the intricate shoreline, picturesque harbors, and traditional vessels of the Virginia portion of the Chesapeake. He became fascinated by the working side of the bay: the hardy watermen, the buy boats that ran fresh catches to market, and the few proud skipjacks still dredging for oysters in the northern bay. |
A Fair Breeze and a Full Moon (1992)
Oil on linen, 18" x 32"
From the deck of the venerable skipjack Kathryn, we see the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse and the Stanley Norman sailing swiftly back to Tilghman Island after selling their catch in Annapolis.
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In his early twenties, Barber built a small sloop, which he used to explore the bay on his own, painting what he saw. He wanted not just to observe, but to understand what he painted. He sought to discover the details of how these working vessels were built and learn the unique rhythms of life on the Chesapeake Bay, America's largest estuary.
He remembers kneeling on ice-slicked decks and culling oysters from the skipjack's dredge as February's bitter winds drove seas over the windward rail. He remembers being aboard a crabber, leaving the harbor in the pre-dawn blackness and trying to finish pulling the never-ending strings of crab pots before the blazing August sun began to beat down. He remembers crawling through the bilge of a buy boat with her proud owner to be shown the new wood put into the chunk-built stern to keep her from sinking.
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Crab Potting (2006)
Oil on linen, 15" x 18"
While poking around the creeks of Mathews County, Barber met Captain Curtis Forrest and his nephew William crabbing aboard the wooden deadrise Hillary Ann. "Just doing his job, just working his pots," Barber recalls. |
The result of more than thirty years of learning the whys and hows of life on the bay is a body of artwork that places the viewer in the heart of the Chesapeake: on the decks of 100-year old boats that still earn their keep, and on the waterfronts of towns like Annapolis, Maryland, and Deltaville, Virginia. As Barber's career progressed, he expanded his focus to capture other Chesapeake scenes, including historic steamboats and schooners and modern-day yacht races.
Barber has been deeply involved in efforts to preserve the bay's ecology and heritage. He served on the board of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation for nine years. Donating copyrights to his artwork has raised nearly half a million dollars for the Foundation and other |
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Chesapeake Bay conservation groups. In 1985, he was commissioned by the National Geographic Society to create a piece for then-President Ronald Reagan; he has also painted for the Clinton administration. One of the artist's most memorable projects was sailing from Annapolis to Martha's Vineyard with Captain Walter Cronkite aboard his sailing ketch Wyntje, in order to paint the famed newscaster's yacht entering Edgartown harbor.
When the artist began painting skipjacks in the early 1980s, there were twenty-six in the Chesapeake oyster fleet. Now just fifteen of these venerable vessels remain, and only five dredged for oysters during the 2008-09 season. Disease and mismanagement have caused the demise of one of America's great fisheries and, with it, the magnificent skipjacks. Still, in Barber's paintings these boats sail on forever. |
Winter on the Eastern Shore (1995)
Oil on linen, 14" x 17" |
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Mallards land on the shore as the steamer Eastern Shore
leaves the Virginia town of Onancock for the journey
back to Baltimore. In the days of sail and steam, boats
like these were the lifeblood of waterfront towns. |
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Melissa Scott Sinclair has written for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, the alternative paper Style Weekly, and other publications. She is married to artist Joshua Barber, John Barber's son.
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