Behold, the Sea Itself 14 JUNE — 7 SEPTEMBER, 2003 The depth and breadth of marine art in the Yale Center for British Art's collections of paintings, drawings, prints, and rare books was showcased in Behold, the Sea Itself. Spanning the late-seventeenth century through the early twentieth centuries, the exhibition presented important themes of travel, trade and exploration, naval power and the sublimity of storm and shipwreck as they were treated by British artists and poets. Displayed alongside images of ships and the sea were excerpts from poems by famous writers ranging from Byron to Tennyson, as well as works that were popular in their own day but are largely forgotten today, such as William Falconer’s "The Shipwreck." The title of the exhibition is taken from lines by the American poet Walt Whitman that were set to music by British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams in his 1910 Sea Symphony.