Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of Ferdinand Petrie
Born in Hackensack, New Jersey in 1925, Ferdinand Ralph Petrie completed his art training at thet Parsons School of Design and The Famous Artist School of Illustration. He also studied painting with Frank Reilly at The Art Students League in New York.
Following World War II service, he worked for 20 years in advertising agencies and studios in New York City, then began painting full time, specializing in pencil and watercolors.
In 1972, he opened his own studio in Rockport, Massachusetts and created a number of contemporary works.
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#3 High Street
It was during this time that he began a series of studies for the Navy and Coast Guard over more than a decade which inspire and endure.
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USCG Icebreaker by Ferdinand Petrie (ID# 87136). The Coast Guard medium harbor tug SNOHOMISH (WYTM-98) on a search and rescue mission in floating ice off Rockland, MA. Snohomish was a 110-foot armed tug commissioned 24 January 1944 and served in the Boston Naval District in WWII. Peacetime service saw everything from busting poachers and drug runners to saving Gotham from her own trash during the garbage collection strike in 1980. Decommissioned 1986, she endured as a yacht and commercial vessel for another 20 years, dropping off the radar in 2005.
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Drug Patrol Duty by Ferdinand Petrie (ID# 87942). A Coast Guardsman mans an M60 machine gun on board a cutter out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, keeping a suspected drug runner under close observation.
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Snohomish by Ferdinand Petrie (ID# 88015). The CGC SNOHOMISH looms in the background as crew members of a 44- foot patrol boat wave in passing.
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Learning the Art of Tying Knots by Ferdinand Petrie (ID# 90405). Two young “Coasties” practice the skill of tying knots.
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Ready for Patrol Duty by Ferdinand Petrie (ID# 88329). MK2 Rick Cremean’s equipment for patrol duty consists of an M-16, a 45, life jacket, flashlight and handcuffs at Coast Guard Station, Gloucester, Mass.
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USCGC Ocracoke (WPB-1307) by Ferdinand Petrie (ID # 90233). A law enforcement team from the Cutter Ocracoke boards a suspected drug-runner’s vessel, the Dealer’s Choice in the Caribbean. Ocracoke has chalked up a number of big busts on her yearly Florida-Gitmo deployments including3,771 pounds (1.9 tons) aboard the La Toto off the northwest coast of St. Croix in 1987
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Search and Rescue on the Great Lakes by Ferdinand Petrie (ID# 89510). The Coast Guard Icebreaker SNOHOMISH prepares to cast off a small boat for a search and rescue mission an HH3F “Pelican” helicopter stands by to assist.
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Ladies in Waiting by Ferdinand Petrie. Two small boats tied up at pier awaiting duty off Gloucester, Mass.
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Getting Aboard from USCGC Ocracoke by Ferdinand Petrie. A law enforcement team from the Cutter Ocracoke boards a suspected drug-runner’s vessel, the Omiaria , in the Caribbean. A 110-foot Island-class patrol cutter, she was commissioned in 1986 and has spent her career based out of Portland, Maine, earning a fair bit of notoriety for rescuing the Canadian sailing ship Liana’s Ransom. She is still on active duty.
Ferdinand Petrie died in 2007 but he has several books penned in the 1990s in circulation on the subject of art with a few still in publication. His art is in the Smithsonian, the Coast Guard Museum in New London, and in the Navy Art Collection.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
