Sometime in the early 1670s King Charles II invited the Dutch marine painter Willem van de Velde and his son, also named Willem, to London, and the genre of marine painting in Britain was begun. So it is no surprise to read on the exhibition wall labels (the lack of a scholarly catalog is my only complaint about this show) that paintings and drawings from the van de Velde studio were widely collected and copied by many of the succeeding British marine painters, among them Peter Monamy (1681-1749) and Dominic Serres (1722-1793), both of whose works are also on view. His "Warships in a Stiff Breeze Off the Dutch Coast" (1785) is a pleasant enough picture, though apparently some of the ships' designs are Dutch and date from the 17th century, suggesting that they may have been lifted from works by the van de Veldes. But for me this show is really about the historical significance of the sea, the means by which Britain acquired its military and commercial dominance in the 18th and 19th centuries.

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