The Custom House at Greenock, Scotland

Robert Salmon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

One of America's earliest marine painters, Salmon worked for many years in his native Britain before immigrating to Boston in 1828, where he exhibited regularly until 1844. Painted probably just after Salmon's arrival in America, this composition pits a rising tempest—conveyed in the cyclonic cloud formation, the eerie light, and the tilting ships—against the fastness of architect William Burn's Doric-style Custom House, built in 1818. The artist lived in Greenock--Scotland's oldest and most important shipbuilding city--from 1812 to 1821.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art