The Museum’s has an extensive collection of maritime paintings by the most renowned maritime artists to work in America. 
 
Featured in the collection:
 
James Edward Buttersworth (1817 – 1894)
English
James Edward Buttersworth was born in Middlesex County, England but immigrated to the United States in the mid-1840s.  From 1847 to1865 he was employed by Nathaniel Currier until he became an established marine artist in his own right.

Antonio Nicolo Gasparo Jacobsen (1850 – 1921)
Danish-American
Antonio Jacobsen moved to New York in 1871 and soon began to specialize in painting portraits of steamers.  He was one of the most prolific maritime painters with over 4,000 known sketches and paintings to his name.
 
Duncan McFarlane (c.1818-1865)
British
McFarlane began his life’s work in Liverpool. He later sailed to America and was employed in the capacity of a ship and figure portraitist in Boston (one of his works was published by Currier & Ives as a lithograph).  His paintings are noted for their skilled draftsmanship and in the ratio of ships to the overall picture area. McFarlane’s work is rarely seen on the public market. His talent has inspired historian A.S. Davidson to define him as “a true artisan of marine art.”
 
John Rubens Smith(c.1775-1849)
American
A master of drawing, topographer, portrait and miniature painter and art teacher, John Rubens Smith was born in London, where he studied with his father, John Raphael Smith, and exhibited portraits at the RoyalAcademy from 1796 to 1811. Smith was a skillful delineator of the American scene in the decades before photography, and a gifted teacher who influenced a generation of American artists through his drawing academies and drawing manuals.