John (Jack) Robert Charles Spurling, British, 1870-1933
Ship "Loch Etive", c. 1925
Gouache on board
15 x 21 inches (38 x 53.3 cm)
Private collection
The Loch Etive was a British iron full-rigged clipper ship built in Glasgow in 1877. The novelist, Joseph Conrad served as her third mate and referred to her in his novel "Mirror of the Seas": "The ship was one of those iron wood clippers that the Clyde had floated out in swarms upon the world during the seventh decade of the last century. It was a fine period in shipbuilding and also, I might say, a period of overmasting. The spars rigged up on the narrow hulls were indeed tall then, and the ship of which I think, with her colored-glass skylight-ends bearing the motto, 'Let Glasgow Flourish,' was certainly one of the most heavily-sparred specimens. She was built for hard driving, and unquestionably she got all the driving she could stand." More on Loch Etive
John (Jack) Robert Charles Spurling (1870 – 31 May 1933) was an English painter noted for nautical themes, particularly sailing ships of the 19th and 20th centuries.
John Robert Charles "Jack" Spurling was the son of an importer and grew up near the London docks, where he learned to sketch as a pastime. At the age of 16 he first went to sea as an apprentice aboard Astoria. His life nearly ended when he fell from the main upper topsail yard to the deck, he instead spent six months in a Singapore hospital. He gained his second mate's certificate after some years aboard one of Devitt & Moore's sail training vessels, and around the same time learned the art of watercolor painting, and was soon receiving commissions from other seafarers. He finished his life at sea as a sailor with the Blue Anchor line of steamers.
Spurling's second love was the stage, and promising career as an actor but success as a painter intruded: In 1921 he met Frederick Arthur Hook (died 1935), editor of The Blue Peter: The Magazine of Sea Travel, Price 1/-,[2] a magazine for sailing enthusiasts. Hook purchased much of Spurling's portfolio of work, and contracted him to supply artwork for the covers of his magazine, the first being the issue of March 1923. More on John (Jack) Robert Charles Spurling
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