British Marine Painting

British artists were looking to Van Dyck as their leader, and were striving, as he did, to immortalize their contemporaries or to tell in paint purely human stories. The brooks and blossoms, birds and flowers did not claim their consideration or provide them with material for popular canvases, and it did not occur to them to paint the groves and twilights, the damasked meadows and the pebbly streams, which Herrick loved so well.