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Gordon Grant
1875–1962
BirthplaceSan Francisco, California, United States of America
Death placeNew York, New York, United States of America
BiographyA painter, illustrator, muralist, printmaker, and writer, Gordon Hope Grant is renowned for his images of ships and the sea. Grant was a native of San Francisco and was sent to school in his ancestral Scotland at the age of thirteen. His voyage around the southern tip of South America and across the Atlantic inspired him with a passion for the sea that yielded images for the rest of his career. He graduated from the Fife Academy in Scotland and then attended the Heatherly and Lambeth Art School in London for two years. Returning to San Francisco, he worked as a staff artist for local newspapers for a year before moving east to make illustrations for New York journals.
At the beginning of the Boer War in South Africa in 1899, Grant became a war artist-correspondent for the popular periodical Harper’s Weekly. Between 1901 and 1909, he was a general illustrator for Puck magazine. In 1927, he became widely known for his painting of the U.S.S. Constitution, which was reproduced and sold to raise funds for the preservation of the historic vessel. From then on, Grant largely devoted himself to images of ships and the sea, in oils and watercolors, many created for the numerous books he illustrated on subjects ranging from whaling to salmon fishing on the Aleutian Peninsula in Alaska, to which he sailed in 1925. In the 1930s, he made illustrations for popular works of so-called pulp fiction; he also painted portraits, images of fishermen, and scenes of streets, harbors, and beaches.
Based in New York, where he became a member of the venerable National Academy of Design, Grant also worked in the artists’ colony at coastal Rockport, Massachusetts. He was a member of numerous artists’ organizations, including many for watercolor painters and for printmakers, including two such bodies in California. In 1950, publication of a book of his sketches brought recognition also of his talents as a draftsman. Grant won numerous awards, including a medal at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exposition Dedicated to Art and Technology in Modern Life) in Paris in 1937. Grant died in New York at the age of eighty-seven.
At the beginning of the Boer War in South Africa in 1899, Grant became a war artist-correspondent for the popular periodical Harper’s Weekly. Between 1901 and 1909, he was a general illustrator for Puck magazine. In 1927, he became widely known for his painting of the U.S.S. Constitution, which was reproduced and sold to raise funds for the preservation of the historic vessel. From then on, Grant largely devoted himself to images of ships and the sea, in oils and watercolors, many created for the numerous books he illustrated on subjects ranging from whaling to salmon fishing on the Aleutian Peninsula in Alaska, to which he sailed in 1925. In the 1930s, he made illustrations for popular works of so-called pulp fiction; he also painted portraits, images of fishermen, and scenes of streets, harbors, and beaches.
Based in New York, where he became a member of the venerable National Academy of Design, Grant also worked in the artists’ colony at coastal Rockport, Massachusetts. He was a member of numerous artists’ organizations, including many for watercolor painters and for printmakers, including two such bodies in California. In 1950, publication of a book of his sketches brought recognition also of his talents as a draftsman. Grant won numerous awards, including a medal at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exposition Dedicated to Art and Technology in Modern Life) in Paris in 1937. Grant died in New York at the age of eighty-seven.