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Copyright/attribution: © P&O Heritage Collection
ROME at anchor in a Fjord
AC/02158/00
Object category: PAINTING
Date made: 1886
Maker: BARNES, Frederick Dallas
Shipping Line:
Material/medium: Oil on board
Dimensions:
- sight: 69.5 x 90 cm; outside frame: 89.3 x 109.7 x 9 cm
This painting is a wonderful mystery! Painted by P&O's managing director, Frederick Dallas Barnes, it appears to show the P&O Passenger liner ROME (1881) at anchor in a fjord. The painting is dated 1886, nearly two decades before ROME was refitted as the cruising yacht VECTIS and began P&O's first Norwegian cruising programme in 1904. Was Barnes dreaming of things to come, or merely imagining a painterly scene? What we do know is that he painted it in the year that he joined the Board of Directors of P&O and was appointed Managing Director. His career with P&O began at an early age in 1859, working in the East for twenty years including a long period as its Agent at Shanghai. Barnes returned to London in 1879, working in P&O’s head office. He died suddenly in 1899 leaving his wife and son Frederick Dallas Barnes (1879-1943) who went on to study art at the Royal Academy schools.