Maritime artist Howard Schafer had a love for tidewater areas and a fascination with commercial fishing, small boats and nature. His paintings featured scenes from New Jersey, South Florida, the Bahamas, New England and beyond. Quiet on the Creek is his homage to the workboats of the Chesapeake Bay.
“Howard’s art presents a diversity of moods ranging from quiet solitude along inland waterways to dynamic conditions of severe weather and ocean sailing activity,” wrote Bion B. Bierer in his book on Schafer. “His river and ocean scenes are never without a boat of some sort, usually a sailboat, commercial vessel or a small craft such as a dinghy, dory or skiff.”
Quiet on the Creek is a good example of Schafer’s affection for these types of vessels. In this scene, a deadrise boat is docked in front of a buyboat. These vessels have long played a central role in the Chesapeake Bay’s commercial fishing industry. Developed in the 1800s, the deadrise workboat has remained one of the most widely used boats for crabbing and oystering. Buyboats served as the “middlemen” of the bay’s oyster trade. They circulated among harvesting boats to buy their catches and transport them to wholesalers or oyster houses. This saved watermen valuable time and kept the fishery moving. A few are still active in Maryland’s and Virginia’s oyster fisheries, but most have been converted to cruising yachts.
Schafer’s appreciation for vessels like these came from a lifetime spent near the water. He grew up along the New Jersey coast and began painting coastal scenes at a young age. He graduated from the Philadelphia Museum College of Art in 1959 and worked as a concept artist for Martin Marietta Corporation in the early 1960s. There, he illustrated the early stages of the U.S. space program. He later moved to New York City, painting and illustrating for Popular Mechanics and Motor Boating & Sailing. During summers, he ran a studio gallery on the New Jersey shore.
A lifelong sailor and owner of a small sailboat, Schafer moved to Florida in 1973 to escape the northern winters and cruise year-round. There, his work included gallery exhibitions, architectural renderings along the Treasure Coast, and paintings for galleries in New York and Los Angeles. Schafer died in April 2004 at age 66.
Courtesy of the J. Russell Jinishian Gallery, jrusselljinishiangallery.com.
October 2025
