MARIOROSSI SEASCAPES Village Underground LONDON **

To paint the sea is never just to paint the sea. How could it be? The sea is protean, ever shape-shifting, ever posing - and proposing - new threats, or new and unpredictable visual delights. To paint the sea is to paint it in relation to the land, the sky, the circumambient world; above all, it is to paint the sea in relation to man himself because, being the great brush-wielder, man calls the shots.

Until, say, the beginning of the 19th century, the sea was scarcely a subject in itself - in spite of the fact that it had figured mightily in marine paintings, in order to set off the glory of a fleet. All that changed with the advent of ...