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SALMON, Robert (Scottish - American, 1775 - ca. 1845). The Ship Liverpool in the Mersey, seen from Wallasey, 1810. Oil on canvas. Signed with initials and dated lower right: RS 1810. Canvas size: 31 1/4 x 42 1/4 inches; frame size: 37 x 47 3/4 inches. Robert Salmon?s splendid painting depicts the distant Liverpool waterfront as seen from Wallasey. At this period Wallasey was undeveloped, and a popular vantage point from which artists could view the city of Liverpool, as seen from the north-west, including part of the unspoiled Wallasey foreshore as foreground. The detailed skyline of Liverpool is illuminated by crisp, pale sunlight and the Dutch vessels on the right of the painting not only enhanced the nautical flavor, but helped ?frame? the distant panorama. In the middle distance at the left of the painting, a British ship is seen in port quarter view. Most unusually for Salmon the vessel is identifiable, the characters LIVERPOOL appearing across the stern. Lloyd?s Register for 1810 has only one such entry, a six year old ship built in Philadelphia, voyaging between Liverpool and Philadelphia, and commanded by Captain Bryan. Close to the water?s edge, on the left of LIVERPOOL?may be seen the Townsend windmill, its arms turned to face the southerly wind. The dome on the skyline to the right of the ship is that of St. Paul?s. Then that of the Town Hall, followed by the spire of St. George?s. Just to the left of the ferry?s mizzen mast is the spire of St. Nicholas. The spire collapsed in 1810, the year of the painting, its replacement in 1814 having a more sophisticated ?lantern? design. Born in Whitehaven, Scotland in 1775, Salmon was the son of a jeweler. Little is known of his early life until early city records place him in Liverpool in 1806 at the age of 30. Salmon remained there until April 1811, when he moved to Greenock, Scotland. Through the rest of the 1810s and '20s he moved frequently, first back to Liverpool, then to Greenock again, then to London, Southampton, North Shields, Liverpool again, until finally he emigrated to America, arriving in Boston at the end of 1829. He remained in Boston, where he received a number of commissions and a high degree of acclaim, until 1840, when he returned to Europe. Although Salmon embraced a number of different genres in his work, he was most celebrated for his unique marine scenes. He painted his ships with a structural precision reminiscent of the Roux family, while his seas boasted a rich tonal clarity. Yet, despite his disciplined and formal approach, his paintings never became a succession of dry topographical renderings, nor his ship portraits mere virtuoso exercises in architectural drafting. He was fully capable of sentiment in the best sense, of expressing his personal feelings about a place, and of capturing the particular character of what he saw before him. His work includes intimate paintings of romantic, unidentified shorelines, as well as valuable historical recordings of how the harbors of Scotland, England, and Boston looked in the early nineteenth century.