Gerald Levey was a nationally recognized marine artist whose work was known for its salty ambiance and authenticity. Levey’s spirited seascapes and ship portraits were based on his long professional life at sea as a career naval officer. Enlisting on his 17th birthday, he served as an enlisted man for four years before being assigned to the Midshipman program at Columbia. Upon graduation and commissioning, he volunteered for submarine duty, served in both diesel and nuclear submarines and rose to command of USS SABLEFISH, a diesel attack submarine. After his retirement from the Navy, he continued to work closely with nuclear attack submarines and their crews to develop search and attack tactics. He received the Navy Distinguished Public Service award for leading the tactical development program for SSN 688 Class nuclear attack submarines.

As a high school art student in Brooklyn, N.Y., Levey roamed the city’s waterfront, sketching and absorbing atmosphere. His paintings of the final years of the great New York port are particularly vivid and document the working merchant ships and harbor craft of the twentieth century.

He was a frequent exhibitor at the Mystic Seaport Maritime Gallery where he was awarded the prestigious Rudolph Schaefer Award at the 1985 Mystic International Show and the Museum Purchase Award for the 1991 International exhibit. He was an Artist member and a past officer of the American Society of Marine Artists and was designated as a Navy and Coast Guard artist.

He is listed in the Dictionary of Sea Painters, an authoritative compilation of marine artists of the Fifteenth through the Twentieth centuries. He is also one of 85 featured artists in the 2003 book Bound for Blue Water by J. Russell Jinishian, which is the definitive guide to contemporary American marine art. He is also listed in the Brooklyn Artists Index maintained by the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Many of Levey’s paintings hang in the wardrooms of naval vessels and in the homes and corporate offices of the seagoing community.

His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Mystic Seaport Museum, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, the Coast Guard Academy and the Submarine Memorial Museum in the New London area. His work is also in the permanent collections of the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia, the U.S. Naval Academy Museum at Annapolis, in Boston at the Charlestown Navy Yard Museum in the Boston National Historic Park and in the Los Angeles Maritime Museum.