Early Life in England
Salmon was born in Whitehaven, Cumberland, England in October or November, 1775 as Robert Salomon; he was christened on 5 November 1775 in Whitehaven. His father, Francis Salomon, was a jeweler. The young Salmon clearly studied the work of Dutch marine painters of the 17th century, the Italian painters of vedute, and the work of Claude Lorrain, but little else is known of his early training. His earliest known works, Two Armed Merchantmen Leaving Whitehaven Harbor and The ‘Estridge’ Off Dover are dated 1800; the first work he exhibited at the Royal Academy was in 1802.
Salmon settled in the busy seaport of Liverpool in 1806 and changed his name from Salomon to Salmon. Many of his marine paintings from this early period survive, and are housed in the National Maritime Museum in London. His ship portraits indicate he had a familiarity with sailing ships and an intimate knowledge of how they worked. These portraits tend to follow his traditional practice of showing the same vessel in at least two positions on the same canvas. In April, 1811 he moved from the Liverpool area to Greenock, Scotland and then back to Liverpool in October 1822. In 1826 he returned to Greenock, then he left for London in 1827, and shortly thereafter he went to Southhampton, North Shields and Liverpool.
Along with many other young artists, Salmon believed that his artistic future lay in the United States. Before his departure in 1828, the artist executed his only extant portrait, Portrait of the Corsair, John Paul Jones, a work very much a part of the Romantic ethos of his time. He assumed his "likeness" of Paul Jones would form a bond with the viewers in his future home. He could not know, having never been to America, that the memory of America's greatest naval hero had effectively vanished in the public mind before the painting was completed.
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