The British painter, James Scott Maxwell, or James Maxwell, remains an elusive artistic entity, due to his nebulous lineage and birth details. Although his works covered a narrow thematic range of British warships and landscapes, his works showed signs of immense brilliance, as in “Villefranche 188”, a drawing of a fleet of ships. Most of his ‘paintings’ were actually small watercolors or the modest steam sketches, such as “Clyde”, “Duchess of York” and “Ben Lemmond”, all done in small 7 by 9 inch frames or in slightly casts. bigger. .
Most of James’s repertoire seemed to be concentrated on the seascapes of the British steamboat saga and pre-WWI ladies-of-war. The works embody an art form popularly known as British or Continental watercolors. The type was more or less a “photo realistic” technical drawing, intended for factual representation rather than artistic creativity and mastery. Maxwell’s drawings of American steamships such as “St. Paul” and “Haverford” are technical sketches, which are powerful attempts at photographic reproduction.
James Scott appears to have been prolific from 1875 to the early 1900s, based on most of his dated sketches. In addition, it seems that most of his works could be commissioned by shipping companies. The artistic merits of James Scott’s works are doubtful, as they display a rigidity of form, found in most “commissioned” watercolorists who documented the British Empire. His “Duchess of Devonshire” is a case in which the opacity of the medium adds to the virtual inertia of the execution, rendering an essentially fluid image static.
Although more than 200 sketches survive James Maxwell, however, there seems to be no variation on the theme, which apparently gives the perception that he only painted seascapes and ships. Even its geographical scope was limited to the port cities of the British Isles, such as Kenningston. Maxwell appears to have painted ships, rooted in a probable fact that he could have lived his entire life only in the coastal belt. It’s hard to put Maxwell in parentheses without sounding critical. You could call him a commercial artist in the modern mold whose work manages slightly to achieve the respectability or individuality of a genuine art lover. James can be given a great benefit of the doubt, as his contemporary “commercial” artists were no better. Compared to the anonymous British watercolorists who painted the “Raj” in India or the “British Overseas Assets in the Colonies”, Maxwell and his companions are a bit shorter.