Robert Salmon

ROBERT SALMON Whitehaven, Cumberland 1775 – circa 1850 Europe A Whitehaven man, Robert Salmon was the son of Francis Salomon, a jeweller from London. He was baptised in the Parish Church of Saint James, Whitehaven, Cumberland, on 5th November 1775. Nothing is known about Robert’s early training, but he developed a unique style of carefully crafted crispness and clarity. He was an extremely peripatetic artist, who may have moved back to London with his family by 1800. By 1806 he had settled in Liverpool, where he remained until 1811, when he moved to Greenock; he divided the early part of his life between these three places. He seems to have been a loner, which may account for his restlessness; one journey from London took him all the way down the south coast to Lands End. In 1826 Salmon was at Greenock for the earlier part of the year, but in November 1828 he sailed for America on the Blackwall sailing packet New York, settling in Boston, where he lived for the next thirteen years. He had a studio at the end of the Marine Railway Wharf overlooking the harbour, at a time when Boston was enjoying great maritime prosperity. As Samuel Eliot Morison remarked, ‘Never before or since had Boston Harbour been so crowded or the water front so congested with sailing vessels’. It was here that Salmon achieved his greatest success. In June 1842 Salmon returned to Europe in failing health and his whereabouts become uncertain, although he is known to have painted Italian views, the latest being of Venice and Palermo, dated 1845. Another painting of this year has recently come to light, a Yacht regatta off New Brighton in the River Mersey, clearly dated 1845 (see AS Davison, Marine Art and the Clyde). It is likely that Salmon was in Europe circa 1845, although his death was not recorded in the Boston Evening Transcript until 1851. The work of Robert Salmon is represented in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Peabody Museum of Salem and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC.