A great natural talent, Thomas Jacques Somerscales took a rather unorthodox route to becoming a recognized marine art sensation in his native England. Educated as a teacher, he sketched and painted while serving onboard ships in the Royal Navy as a schoolmaster. Influenced early on by the beauty of J M W Turner's compositions, Somerscales' work possesses his acute sense for the world's creative nature, and the deep strength of its challenging oceans. Some of Somerscales's earliest known works are of exotic locales in Tahiti, painted years before Gauguin's time there. The son of a master mariner, fate and circumstances put him ashore in Chile in 1869 when he contracted malaria. On his recovery Somerscales excelled as a local artist and i...