Samuel Walters (1811–82)
“Aurora,” c. 1860
Oil on canvas
McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Gift of Charles W. Lanagan Jr. ’70 & Joan M. Lanagan in memory of Edward B. Thomas, 2016.88
Nancy Netzer
Inaugural Robert L. and Judith T. Winston Director, McMullen Museum and Professor, Art History
Born in Liverpool and trained in the city’s Academy of Marine Art, Samuel Walters became the most famous painter of ship portraits working in the massive port of Liverpool. Smaller forerunners of twentieth-century ocean liners, packet ships, like the Aurora depicted here off the coast of Liverpool, were the first to sail regularly between America and Europe. Built in New York by William Webb in 1854, the Aurora transported many Irish and Scottish immigrants from Liverpool to New York in the mid-1850s and 1860s.
At its launch, the New York Daily Tribune commented the Aurora demonstrated “that a humanitarian policy is being adopted in the construction of emigrant ships. This vessel will probably carry 1,000 passengers, and yet, her ventilatory and other sanitary provisions have been so well attended to, that she will prove a more healthy and comfortable ship than many vessels that come to this port with less than half that number of emigrants.”