04 Classic Works of Art, Marine Paintings - With Footnotes, #60

Charles Edward Dixon, 1872 - 1934
OFF NEW BRIGHTON , 1899
Watercolour
37 x 55.5cm
Private collection

New Brighton is a seaside resort forming part of the town of Wallasey within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside. Up to the 19th century, the area had a reputation for smuggling and wrecking, and secret underground cellars and tunnels are still rumoured to exist. It also had a strategic position at the entrance to the Mersey Estuary.

In 1830, a Liverpool merchant, James Atherton, purchased 170 acres (69 ha) of land at Rock Point, which enjoyed views out to sea and across the Mersey and had a good beach. His aim was to develop it as a desirable residential and watering place for the gentry.

During the latter half of the 19th century, New Brighton developed as a very popular seaside resort serving Liverpool and the Lancashire industrial towns, and many of the large houses were converted to inexpensive hotels. A pier was opened in the 1860s, More on New Brighton

Charles Edward Dixon (8 December 1872 - 12 September 1934) was a British maritime painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose work was highly successful and regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy. Several of his paintings are held by the National Maritime Museum and he was a regular contributing artist to magazines and periodicals. He lived at Itchenor in Sussex and died in 1934. More on Charles Edward Dixon

John Atkinson Grimshaw,  (1836–1893)
Glasgow, Saturday Night
Oil on canvas
60 × 91 cm (23.6 × 35.8 in)
Private collection

Glasgow  is the largest city in Scotland, and third-largest in the United Kingdom. It is situated on the River Clyde in the country's West Central Lowlands. Glasgow is the fourth most visited city in the UK.

Glasgow grew from a small rural settlement on the River Clyde to become the largest seaport in Britain. Expanding from the medieval bishopric and royal burgh, and the later establishment of the University of Glasgow in the fifteenth century, it became a major centre of the Scottish Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. From the eighteenth century onwards, the city also grew as one of Great Britain's main hubs of transatlantic trade with North America and the West Indies. More on Glasgow


John Atkinson Grimshaw (6 September 1836 – 13 October 1893) was an English Victorian-era artist, a "remarkable and imaginative painter" known for his city night-scenes and landscapes.

He was born in Leeds to Mary and David Grimshaw. In 1856 he married his cousin Frances Hubbard (1835–1917). In 1861, at the age of 24, to the dismay of his parents, he left his job as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway to become a painter. He first exhibited in 1862, mostly paintings of birds, fruit and blossom, under the patronage of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society. He became successful in the 1870s and rented a second home in Scarborough, which became a favourite subject.



Grimshaw's primary influence was the Pre-Raphaelites. True to the Pre-Raphaelite style, he created landscapes of accurate colour and lighting, vivid detail and realism, often typifying seasons or a type of weather. Moonlit views of city and suburban streets and of the docks in London, Hull, Liverpool and Glasgow also figured largely in his art. His careful painting and his skill in lighting effects meant that he captured both the appearance and the mood of a scene in minute detail. His "paintings of dampened gas-lit streets and misty waterfronts conveyed an eerie warmth as well as alienation in the urban scene. More on John Atkinson Grimshaw


HAMADI MHAMED, b. 1950, Tunisia
Old-port of Bizerte
Oil on canvas
15.7 H x 23.6 W x 0.8 in
Private collection


Bizerte is known as the oldest and most European city in Tunisia. It was founded around 1100 BC by Semitic Phoenicians from Tyre. It is also known as the last town to remain under French control after the rest of the country won its independence from France. More on Bizerte

Hamadi MHAMED is a Tunisian artist born in Bizerte - Tunisia in 19/06/1950. Hamadi has a Diploma in Fine Arts from National Institute of Arts & Technology of Tunis and has worked in different fields of media publishing & interactive events from 1978 until 2011. More on Hamadi MHAMED


Montague Dawson, R.S.M.A., F.R.S.A., 1895-1973
THE PACKET DEVONSHIRE 
Oil on canvas laid down on board 
36 by 28 in., 91.4 by 71.1 cm
Private collection

The present work depicts the packet ship Devonshire. Named for the Duke of Devonshire, it was built in New York in 1848 by Westervelt & Mackey. The first packet ships were built in the eighteenth century and were designed to transport mail between Great Britain and her colonies, as well as passengers and freight. In her first year of frequent sailing between New York and London, Devonshire transported the largest number of cabin passengers ever to cross the Atlantic and garnered much attention as one of the finest examples of naval engineering. More on the  Devonshire

Montague Dawson RMSA, FRSA (1890–1973) was a British painter who was renowned as a maritime artist. His most famous paintings depict sailing ships, usually clippers or warships of the 18th and 19th centuries. Montague was the son of a keen yachtsman and the grandson of the marine painter Henry Dawson (18111878), born in Chiswick, London. Much of his childhood was spent on Southampton Water where he was able to indulge his interest in the study of ships. For a brief period around 1910 Dawson worked for a commercial art studio in Bedford Row, London, but with the outbreak of the First World War he joined the Royal Navy. Whilst serving with the Navy in Falmouth he met Charles Napier Hemy (18411917), who considerably influenced his work. In 1924 Dawson was the official artist for an Expedition to the South Seas by the steam yacht St.George. During the expedition he provided illustrated reports to the Graphic magazine.

After the War, Dawson established himself as a professional marine artist, concentrating on historical subjects and portraits of deep-water sailing ships. During the Second World War, he was employed as a war artist. Dawson exhibited regularly at the Royal Society of Marine Artists, of which he became a member, from 1946 to 1964, and occasionally at the Royal Academy between 1917 and 1936. By the 1930s he was considered one of the greatest living marine artists, whose patrons included two American Presidents, Dwight D Eisenhower and Lyndon B Johnson, as well as the British Royal Family. Also in the 1930s, he moved to Milford-Upon-Sea in Hampshire, living there for many years. Dawson is noted for the strict accuracy in the nautical detail of his paintings which often sell for six figures.

The work of Montague Dawson is represented in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth. More on Montague Dawson








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01 Marine Work, GEORGE SAVARY WASSON's USS Brooklyn at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, With Footnotes, #320

GEORGE SAVARY WASSON (American, 1855-1932) USS Brooklyn at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, c. 1901 Oil on canvas 30 x 45 in. Private collect...