The Master of the Maritime Canvas In the mid-nineteenth century, as the golden age of sail met the burgeoning era of steam, there arose a painter whose brush captured the very soul of the ocean's majesty and peril. Duncan MacFarlane, a British marine painter active between 1848 and 1863, possessed a rare ability to translate the rhythmic violence of the sea and the stoic grace of maritime vessels onto canvas. Born in 1818, MacFarlane…