This story was first published in the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) Volunteers’ quarterly magazine, ‘All Hands’, Issue 129 in December 2024. The author, Geoff Barnes is a volunteer with both the ANMM and naval Historical Society of Australia.
Time on your hands? Delve into a new section of the NHSA website to immerse yourself in a wealth of art about the Royal Australian Navy.
On the Home Page of this website you can locate a menu button entitled ‘Exploring Naval Art’. This addition of this feature marked the completion of a year-long project by the Society volunteers to create a new section in the website which features more than 200 paintings by more than 50 artists of RAN ships, submarines and aircraft, and the people who crew them. It is a unique medium for understanding Australia’s rich naval history by linking the event, place and person portrayed with its historical context. The artist and the circumstances in which the artwork was created are also linked. It is organised for easy browsing by vessel, artist and place. Sailors at work and sailors at rest each have their own category.
Such a broad topic means that this site does not present itself as comprehensive. The images are gathered from a multiplicity of sources. The NHSA acknowledges the owners of copyright for all the paintings depicted on this site. Accordingly, this general acknowledgement is provided in lieu of individual acknowledgement of individual painters or their beneficiaries. This is due to the age of some paintings, lack of knowledge about current ownership of an original painting and in some case details of the painter. The Societies purpose in reproducing images of these paintings is purely educational. That is, to enhance community understanding of Australian naval history.
There is no intention on the part of the Society to profit from this initiative. Users of this website are requested to respect copyright and acknowledge the artist if an image is used for private purposes. The intention is that it will be an on-going project, growing expansively as further images are identified and researched. This collection explores artworks that capture scenes of the Royal Australian Navy vessels, battle scenes and significant events and life on board. Such artworks offer a vivid and emotional perspectives that are – so often – missing from the written histories.
The site provides a great range of artistic perspectives. Take, for example, the historical recreations by the renowned artist Phil Belbin. Belbin was asked to illustrate the book The Royal Australian Navy: the first seventy-five years and he produced twenty-six outstanding paintings and several drawings by Phil Belbin. The text, incidentally, was by Ross Gillett, another long-serving NHSA member and extensively published author. There’s a wealth of detail in this one image, painted by Phil in 1986, but meticulously researched and brought together in a way that a contemporary photograph could not achieve. In the foreground are Seagull Mk V RAAF A2 9 single-engine amphibian reconnaissance aircraft, a fine old Sydney K class steam ferry, Fort Macquarie Tram Depot (demolished in 1958 to make way for the construction of the Sydney Opera House), a cargo ship docked next to this tram shed, and out in Farm Cove, by the Domain headland, a County-class heavy cruiser and the destroyer HMAS Stuart.
Contrast the Belbin set-piece with the immediacy of this image. Australian artist and passionate peace activist George Gittoes visited Somalia and Australian troops on peacekeeping operations during the United Nations Operation in Somalia in the capacity of a war artist, commissioned by the Australian War Memorial. He has explored his personal concerns with war and violence, often at considerable personal risk, in places such as Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Israel and Palestine.
Roy Hodgkinson worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for two Sydney newspapers spent 1938-39 travelling in Europe studying art. On his return to Australia, he enlisted as a trooper in the Armoured Division and was posted to Darwin, Northern Territory in time to capture on canvas the Japanese bombing of Darwin in February 1942 and was eventually commissioned as an official war artist on 10th September 1943, carrying the rank of Captain. Roy’s works are detailed and intricate pencil and conte, showing both day-to-day life as well as the extraordinary. Post-war he returned to Melbourne to continue his art. Much of his post-war work shows scenes and portraits of the theatre. He was a long-serving member of the Melbourne Savage Club, which attracted artists, intellectuals and business leaders. He continued to work for The Herald newspaper, retiring as Chief Artist in 1976. The Australian War Memorial holds many of Hodgkinson’s works.
In 2002 Peter Churcher was commissioned as the Australian War Artist to document the Australian Navy in the Persian Gulf. He was sent to the Persian Gulf and Diego Garcia, where he recorded the people and operations of the Royal Australian Navy and Royal Australian Air Force. During this commission he produced many oil paintings and drawings of works characterised by spontaneity, a refreshing directness. Each artists bringing a particular perspective to his subject.
At the launching of the site, one of the guest speakers was John Dikkenberg, well known to the ANMM, and vice president of the NSW chapter of the ASMA, the Australian Society of Marine Artists. He said that the ASMA frequently debated what marine art actually is. ‘We have never resolved this issue but accept that if it includes a ship, or a boat, ocean, a bay or seafarers, a boatyard, a shipyard or maritime artifacts it is “marine art”. The importance is not what the subject is so much as the essence of what it projects.
‘So, what then is naval or RAN art? Marine and naval art has its genesis in that period before photography and it was the only real way that ship-owners and navies could easily introduce their ships to the general public. In this modern age, owners and navies frequently anticipate the arrival of new ships by releasing computer generated images. Perfect in every way, you admire the render and perhaps wonder whether a painting can do as well. A painting can do a great deal more. The artist can achieve what cameras and CGI images often fail to capture – nuance, emotion, power, vulnerability and atmosphere. The scale of events. These are human measures that come from the end of a brush.’
Dale Marsh’s painting depicts Ordinary Seaman Edward ‘Teddy’ Sheean, strapped to an anti-aircraft gun on HMAS Armidale. He is at the stern, dressed only in shorts and boots, a wound on his right thigh, firing an Oerlikon anti-aircraft gun at Japanese dive-bombers. He went down with the ship, firing his gun to the last. Dale Marsh’s painting of Edward Sheean became famous because on 10 August 2020, the Prime Minister of Australia accepted the findings of a panel and recommended the Queen posthumously award Sheean the Victoria Cross for Australia. The Queen approved the award on 12 August and Governor-General General David Hurley presented the award to Sheean’s nephew, Garry Ivory. Significantly, Sheean’s medal was the first VC awarded to a Royal Australian Navy crew member. Note that one of the Collins Class submarines now in service is named HMAS Sheean.
That is just six images from the site. Open it up and browse. It is well worth the visit.
