Geoffrey Campbell Beaumont will offer a presentation about his father Arthur Beaumont’s life and work as the U.S. Navy’s official Artist of the Fleet, the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum (SBMM) has announced. The online event will take place via Zoom, 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 21.

Attendance is free but registration is required and donations are welcome. Register at https://sbmm.org/santa-barbara-events/.

Beaumont will share personal stories of the various paintings and provide viewers with his unique insight into this incomparable exhibit, the art and the artist.

Arthur Beaumont: Art of the Sea — an exhibit of 53 paintings chronicling the accomplishments of the U.S. Navy, from the USS Constitution to atomic bomb tests and expeditions to the North and South poles — will be at the SBMM until the end of May, the last show on the West Coast before it leaves for the East Coast.

Beaumont used Impressionist techniques in painting the images in the exhibit and in capturing the majesty of the oceans and the vessels that sail them. The show will be accompanied by a book of his life and art, also titled “Arthur Beaumont: Art of the Sea,” written by Beaumont’s son Geoffrey and published by the Irvine Museum in Irvine, California.

Arthur Beaumont (1890-1978) was born in Norfolk County, England. He came to the U.S. in 1908 to study art at Berkeley, before moving to Los Angeles and opening his first commercial art studio in 1917. After studying further with other artists in the U.S. and Europe, and teaching art and watercolor painting,

Beaumont was commissioned as a U.S. Navy lieutenant, and became the Artist of the Fleet by 1933, starting his lifelong work of depicting naval vessels in various settings and states of preparedness through World War II, nuclear bomb testing, the Korean War, in Vietnam, and naval missions to China, Japan, Alaska and Antarctica, as well as Revolutionary War-era sailing vessels and portraits of prominent naval officers.

SBMM is at the Santa Barbara Harbor, 113 Harbor Way, Ste. 190. Visit sbmm.org or call 805-962-8404 for details.