Montague Dawson was born into an artistic family in London in 1895. His father was an artist and an accomplished sailor on the River Thames, while his grandfather, Henry Dawson, was a successful landscape painter. From an early age, Dawson was surrounded by both art and sailing, and although he received no formal artistic training, he developed a remarkable talent for painting. His experience serving in the Royal Navy during the First World War further deepened his knowledge of ships and the sea. After the war, he established himself as a painter and illustrator and became known for his beautifully detailed and historically accurate paintings of sailing ships. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1917 and was a founding member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists. The Ocean Express is a wonderful example of Dawson’s celebrated paintings of the great sailing ships of the nineteenth century. The 1,699-ton American clipper is shown under a magnificent spread of sail, moving through a lively sea with the wind filling her canvas. Dawson’s careful attention to the ship’s rigging and construction is balanced by his beautiful handling of light, sky and water, giving the painting a wonderful sense of movement and atmosphere. Built at Medford, Massachusetts, the Ocean Express made numerous voyages between the Atlantic and San Francisco during the golden age of sail and later served as a troop transport during the American Civil War.