Fleeting Colors

gouache, 12 1/2" x 19"

$5,000

The painting depicts the British tea clipper Taitsing running before a brisk wind and foam-covered sea as sunset approaches and the late afternoon clouds glow in orange and magenta as the last rays of the sun color the windswept scene.

Taitsing was launched in 1865 as a composite-built clipper meant to sail in the China tea trade.  She did so for the next decade, always hard driven but never finishing in the top handful, though her passages were always quite decent.  In 1876 she was sold out of the trade and was lost in 1881 off the coast of Zanzibar.