When Peter W. Sparre (A&S) arrived at the University of Hartford in the fall of 1963, he already had an encyclopedic knowledge of ocean liners and inter-island packets and had begun drawing "visionary" or imagined steamships. Today his drawings are historically accurate and based on builders' plans and other archival sources. "I am working full time as an artist, and I have never been happier," he said.
In fact, this year Peter completed a portfolio of 36 colored line drawings of British steamships, an endeavor that has spanned 21 years and 4,000 hours of work. Now Peter is working on text to accompany each of these drawings. The result will be a book illustrated by his plates showing the architecture of this high period in the history of the steamship.
At the University, where he was a history major, Peter found a "congenial environment" and "a great deal of help in research and writing." He recalls in particular a research paper on the history of transatlantic steamship lines that he submitted to the late Eugene Sweeney, and a course in American geography taught by Harry Siebert. Of Siebert, Peter said, "He was a strong influence and a wonderful professor who rejuvenated my interest." Peter had returned to the University for his senior year after a two-and-a-half-year absence for health reasons, and Siebert "regenerated interest" in an industrial project and later arranged for Peter to tour Bethlehem Steel plants in support of his interest.
Following his graduation from high school, Peter spent the summer as an intern at the Smithsonian Institution in what was then called the National Museum in the Arts and Industries Building. He secured the position through Howard Chapelle, curator of transportation, who had been impressed with Peter's knowledge of ocean liners. Peter recalled that his last day of work that summer fell on Aug. 28, 1963, the day of Martin Luther King Jr.'s march on Washington, and he was there for the event.
Peter's early drawings were done with pencil and ballpoint pens. Later he developed a technique using india ink over pencil with watercolor. Although almost all of his line drawings now are historically accurate renderings of real ocean liners, he has included in his portfolio a visionary concept of a steamship he has named R.M.S. Atlantis, filling a gap in ocean liner history. He works with a scale of 1 inch to 24 feet, and his drawings range from 14 x 18 inches to 28 x 48 inches. His knowledge of boats and ships is based not only on extensive research but also on his own experiences, beginning in his childhood with yachting trips with his father and extending through a number of steamship crossings of the Atlantic.
When Peter completes his coffee table book on the "high period of the ocean liner," he intends it to be a definitive work on the steamship.
