Jack L. Gray
Jack L. Gray, full name Jack Lorimer Gray, was a Canadian painter known for marine art. He was born on April 28, 1927, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and died in September 1981.
Growing up in Halifax, Gray showed an early talent for drawing ships. He studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) around 1945, where he was mentored by artists such as Elizabeth Styring Nutt and David Whitzman and met fellow painters like Earl Bailly and Joseph Purcell. He spent summers sketching island life on East Ironbound and New Harbour, and he briefly took a life-drawing course in Montreal in 1948. He also spent seasons at sea with Nova Scotia’s dory-fishing schooner fleet, building a strong portfolio of sea views.
Gray’s first major solo show was in 1948 in Chester, Nova Scotia, which led to commissions from prominent patrons. In the early 1950s he lived aboard boats and gained attention for his sea paintings, including work tied to the 1951 wreck of the steamship Dufferin Bell. He did pen-and-ink illustrations for Thomas Head Raddall’s A Muster of Arms (1954) and painted scenes from wartime Nova Scotia for the book’s jacket.
In the mid-1950s Gray moved to New York City, painting in studios on boats in Flushing Bay and using a flat-bottomed skiff he nicknamed the S.O.B. He even painted on the deck of the decommissioned USS Enterprise. His New York period produced the well-known New York Harbor Collection, and he had his first New York show in 1955. He also did posters for a film in Spain (John Paul Jones) in 1958–59.
Gray settled in Winterport, Maine, in 1959, then moved to Halifax in 1961, later establishing a home on the Northwest Arm with a dock for his boat. Through publicity work in the early 1960s, his painting Dressing Down, the Gully helped bring him wider attention and culminated in a visit with President John F. Kennedy at the White House in 1962. He maintained connections with galleries in Palm Beach and Florida while keeping a summer retreat in Nova Scotia.
In the 1970s Gray had many exhibitions around the world. He produced high-quality reproductions of his work, including the New York Harbor Collection, and continued to paint his signature sea scenes. In the late 1970s he objected to promotional prints that used his name without permission.
Gray’s preferred subjects included deep-keeled skiffs, Tancook schooners, and Cape Islander boats, often shown from the deck of a vessel. He mainly painted in oil on canvas, usually hand-stretched, and typically did not date his works, using a code instead. Watercolors are rarer, and he did not use acrylics.
He was known for his love of boats and boating life, and he sailed across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. Gray died on September 4, 1981, in Good Samaritan Hospital, West Palm Beach, Florida, after a post-operative infection. His ashes were scattered at sea near Lunenburg Bay.
After his death, the value of Gray’s works rose, though there were also forgeries and thefts of his paintings. Interest in his life and art revived after 2001, with retrospectives and rising prices. In 2006 one of his pieces, Man at Sea, sold at Christie’s in New York for $91,200.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 14:39 (CET).