These particular pictures are quoted because, being all in a national collection, they are accessible to every one and are permanently available to illustrate the varying relation of humanity with the sea. They represent a class of production within which is comprehended a wide range of subjects and to which a host of distinguished artists have made important contributions; they point the direction in which there is still much to be found that is worthy of the most serious consideration and the most carefully applied treatment; and they mark the lines along which men who have the faculty of observation and a capacity for personal interpretation can travel to great accomplishment. There is, indeed, hardly any kind of sentiment that does not, in this connexion, lend itself well to the artist’s purpose: tragedy, domestic drama, romance, pure fantasy, comedy even, are all permissible, and often a picture with the most attractive qualities can be made out of a plain statement of everyday facts, so picturesque is the setting which the sea life provides for the people who lead it. During recent years, indeed, many painters have established themselves by the sea with the express intention of seeking there material for important works, and many others have paid long visits to our coasts for the sake of studying at close quarters the subjects which are so plentifully available; and these men have not found it necessary to depart from strict reality to give interest and convincing strength to their pictures. By being true to fact, by recording faithfully what they saw around them, they have added to British art much that is well worth possessing, and they have proved that realism under suitable conditions is a factor of infinite value in pictorial production. They have had ample scope for the exercise of their selective sense and for the use of their powers of observation, and even though they have chosen to deal with a clearly defined class of material they have not been hampered by limitations which checked the free expression of their temperamental preferences. This is because the sea life is so abounding in action, and because the people who lead it are of so many types and so unstereotyped in their ways, that to the painter who works by the sea a constant succession of new motives is presented, and motives, too, which by their picturesqueness and human interest satisfy completely the artistic demand.