A beguiling approach to the relationship of artists to the sea, looking in detail at single works by ten artists: from Vanessa Bell’s Studland Beach and Paul Nash’s Winter Sea, via Alfred Wallis, Stanley Spencer, Peter Lanyon, Bridget Riley, Hamish Fulton and Martin Parr, to Tracey Emin and John Akomfrah. Le Brun uses these examples to weave compelling threads about modernism, the two World Wars, social history, disorientation, identity and the environment. A few illustrations.