On a Painted Ocean - Art of the Seven Seas, is a book that boldly sets forth for our consideration, enjoyment and edification more than 150 maritime art selected from world culture. In it, we find the terrible beauty of storms, the stark horror of war, the exotic interplay in ports of call, the efficiency and interdependence of ocean commerce, the cornucopia of the sea's bounty and the spirit of challenge, adventure, achievement and innovation that characterizes humankind's relationship with the sea through the ages. From the artifacts of the past to the abstractions of the present, the book includes some stirringly familiar masterpieces, and it also showcases lesser-known and often-dazzling works that broaden our notion of the maritime genre. There are images that memorialize events, and objects from the mundane to the esoteric such as an ancient Greek bowl, an illustration from a classic sea novel, tapestries, maps, illuminated manuscripts, advertising ephemera and even a birth certificate. On a Painted Ocean is bound together as an unfolding whole by Peter Neill's short, compelling essays. These tracts are both philosophical and poetic, affecting in their beauty and insight. The themes suggested by the images selected are driven by and shaped by the sea. They are grouped into sections that are both evocative and provocative of their subjects. Neill sets the stage in the introduction. It flows into a chapter called "The Eternal Sea," which recalls an illustrious past and the sea's timelessness. "Expanding Horizons" covers the age of great explorations with vessels and individuals that figure in important voyages of discovery. In "War at Sea," drumbeats and cannon roll across the waters in the depiction of history's great sea battles fought in the name of glory, for wealth and territorial aspirations. This visually compelling chapter reverberates with the violence of broadsides and human losses. "The Fickle Sea" depicts the earth's waters in all their unpredictable fury. Storms are the seaman's greatest source of challenge as well as of fear and danger. Marine art from all cultures documents the horrors of shipwreck and loss, torn sails and broken spars, terrified and drowned crewmen, and the emotional power of tragedy at sea from the Medusa to the Titanic. The book concludes with "Emanations," in which Neill invokes the mood and emotion of the sea. He posits that the sea can be understood as the ideal context for creativity - for imagination and invention, renewal and recreation of the soul. On a Painted OCean is a spectacular portfolio of maritime paintings and objects, both familiar and lesser-known, organized and brought together by text that both illuminates and magnifies. Full-color plates reveal in exquisite detail and astonishing clarity the nuances of a superb collection of some of the world's great marine art. -- from dust jacket.