“Gordon Grant’s technical knowledge of sailing ships and their intricacies is the admiration of many an old salt who knows all there is to know about sails and rig … his greatest pleasure is to record in his canvases the glamorous story of the age of sail.”
- Page Cooper, “Gordon Grant” in Authors and Others (Publisher unknown, 1927 and 1970), 31-32.

As a young boy in San Francisco with a passion for drawing, Gordon Hope Grant took naturally to maritime subjects. He travelled to Scotland for schooling at the age of twelve, where he resided for the next six years in the seaside town of Fifeshire. At eighteen, he began studying art in London. Two years later he returned to San Francisco with a position as an illustrator for the Examiner. His work as an illustrator won rapid recognition after he moved to New York just before the turn of the century, and was employed by the Sunday World, Harper’s Weekly, and Puck. Grant began to focus solely on painting around 1920, and devoted himself primarily to images of ships and the sea. He was a member of the National Academy of Design, Salmagundi Club, and the American Water Color Society, among others. He exhibited in New York, Chicago, and California.