Geoffrey Huband

English artist Geoffrey Huband was born in Worcestershire in 1945, and studied at Stourbridge College of Art and Victoria College, Manchester University. On leaving college he taught, but in 1970 he moved to Cornwall to paint full-time, and found in its rugged, maritime beauty the inspiration for paintings, which are now commissioned internationally. Huband, who lives and paints in the small village of Marazion, is known for his cover art on the novels of Douglas Reeman and Alexander Kent. As a student in the 1960’s, he came to admire painters of the Newlyn School, who depicted day-to-day subjects in the fishing villages of Cornwell, as well as Montague Dawson for his “style and directness.” Huband’s work embodies naval scenes from the Age of Sail and the Second World War, as well as the seascapes and maritime communities of far southwest England.

"Visually I am intrigued by the abstracted qualities of maritime painting," says Huband. "The solidity of hulls, the apparent delicacy of masts and spars, the fragile beauty of sails billowing or revealing the form of the masts as they are blown aback. I enjoy the ordered tracery of rigging seen as a bold statement against the bright sky. My interest in maritime painting is excited as much by the physical appearance of ships as it is by the romance that time and history have endowed upon the subject. I am interested in ships for their beauty as well as for their functional qualities, and I am fascinated by the ingenuity that has been displayed in their construction and development since earliest times. The focus of my interest centers between 1700 and 1800, a period I regard as the peak of achievement in the combination of function and beauty in ships as well as architecture."

Proposed as a Candidate for the Royal Society of Marine Artists in 2014, and elected as an Associate Member of the RSMA in 2015.