Detail: TWO MEN-OF-WAR IN A GALE
Oil on canvas, laid on board
38 x 58.5 cm.; 15 x 23 in.
Private collection
Charles Brooking (c.1723–59) was an English painter of marine scenes. Despite his short life, Charles Brooking was one of the most influential British marine painters of the eighteenth century. His best work was achieved in the final decade of his life. Brooking excelled at painting shipping in calm conditions, using luminous glazes to give a sense of light on sails moving gently in the lightest of breezes, subtle cloudscapes and the shifting hues and reflections of the sea. He was influenced by Willem van de Velde the Younger and Peter Monamy, but forged his own highly individual style which in turn influenced Dominic Serres the Elder (who may have been his pupil) and Francis Swaine.
Charles Brooking was probably ‘bred in some department of the dockyard’; his father may have been the Charles Brooking who was a painter and decorator at Greenwich from 1729 to 1736. He is likely to have been self-taught. In 1752 he worked as a botanical draughtsman for John Ellis’s (?1710-1776) Natural History of the Corallines (1755). Brooking is said to have worked for a dastardly picture dealer in Leicester Square, who concealed his identity so that clients would not be able to commission him directly…
Zaidan Gallery 
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