A special painting by this exceptional California artist, Gleason met the U.S.S. CONSTITUTION as she arrived in the greater Los Angeles harbor in 1933. Gleason soon established a friendship with her crew and captain, Commander Louis Gulliver, and toured onboard as their guest for days, sketching and painting. This large vertical portrait he considered not only his best painting of the historic ship, but also among the penultimate works of his career. While he displayed it as his centerpiece of painting exhibition hanging in the Hotel Maryland in Pasadena as part of the Tournament of Roses celebration, he begrudgingly bartered it in trade with his family practitioner, Dr. Homer Bailey of Pasadena. Dr. Bailey, who had delivered all of Gleason's children, had a Sunset Boulevard practice and was the chief surgical instructor at UCLA Medical Center for years.
The oldest commissioned warship in the American Navy, "Old Ironsides" survived 42 battles and years of neglect. On her grand tour of the United States after four years of restoration efforts, the warship visited at least one port in every coastal state from Maine to Washington, twice transiting the Panama Canal, from July 1931 to June 1934.
Some of Gleason's works of CONSTITUTION were purchased by the captain and crew to keep onboard and to give to mayors of cities visited, and one was reproduced as a postcard by the hotel San Diego for its farewell voyage from California. While others exist, this is the best of the highly regarded and valued works Gleason made of "The Glorious Ship". The brushwork and coloration is so striking and unique with pinks, lavenders, and greens that it is a stand-out painting in comparison with any fine art maritime or marine-theme work.
