Rodney Charman

Rodney Charman is a British painter who specialises in marine art scenes. He first began painting at the age of 21 and his early works depicted scenes featuring horses, before his love of sailing saw him specialise in maritime art.

Rodney used to make model ships as a child and studied the plans of seagoing vessels. He also copied illustrations of ships in watercolour and was inspired by his father, who painted small oil paintings of ships while away on service. "I think there was a desire to emulate that," he told Cruise magazine in 2005.

A number of mundane jobs followed when he left school, including working on the Lymington-to-Yarmouth Isle of Wight ferry, before Rodney joined a large engineering firm.

"I was so bored with the environment that I’d pass the time by drawing caricatures of other workers. Then someone suggested I should put this artistic ability and interest to a more productive use and urged me to apply for a position in the publicity department. I took along some of my (what was then early) paintings of ships and to my complete surprise they offered me the job."

He was commissioned to create a series of paintings depicting the marine history of Nantucket, which were collected in the book Portrait of Nantucket, 1659-1890: The Paintings of Rodney Charman in 1989. These works are on permanent display at the Egan Maritime Institute and the Coffin School in Nantucket. Meanwhile, paintings from his 1996 book The Famine Ships were used to create a major exhibition at the South Street Seaport Museum, New York two years after its publication. His work has also featured at the annual London exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists on numerous occasions.