01 Marine Painting, With Footnotes, #265

Charles Murray Padday, RI, ROI (1868–1954)

The Harbour at Bougie, Algeria

Oil on canvas

61 by 75cm., 24 by 29½in.

Private collection

Béjaïa is a Mediterranean port city on the Gulf of Béjaïa in Algeria. According to Al-Bakri, the bay was first inhabited by Andalusians.

Béjaïa stands on the site of the ancient city of Saldae, a minor port in Carthaginian and Roman times it was founded as a colony for old soldiers by emperor Augustus.

According to Muhammad al-Idrisi, the port was, in the XIth century, a market place between Mediterranean merchant ships and caravans coming from the Sahara desert. Christian merchants settled fundunqs in Bejaïa. The Italian city of Pisa was closely tied to Béjaïa, where it built one of its two permanent consulates in the African continent.

After a Spanish occupation (1510–55), the city was taken by the Ottoman Turks in the Capture of Bougie in 1555. For nearly three centuries, Béjaïa was a stronghold of the Barbary pirates. The city consisted of Arabic-speaking Moors, Moriscos and Jews increased by Jewish refugees from Spain, with the Berber peoples not in the city but occupying the surrounding villages and travelling to the city occasionally for the market days.

It was captured by the French in 1833 and became a part of colonial Algeria. More on Béjaïa 

Charles Murray Padday, RI, ROI (1868–1954), aka Norman L. Wilkinson, was a renowned British artist and illustrator. Wilkinson usually worked in oils, watercolors and drypoint. He was primarily a marine painter, but he was also an illustrator, poster artist, and wartime camoufleur.

Wilkinson studied at Berkhamsted School of Art, and later at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.


Wilkinson's career in illustration began in 1898, when his work was first accepted by the Illustrated London News, for which he then continued to work for many years, as well as for the Illustrated Mail. Throughout his life, he was a prolific poster artist, designing for the London and North Western Railway, and the London Midland and Scottish Railway. It was mostly because of his fascination with the sea that he travelled extensively to such locations as Spain, Germany, Italy, Malta, Greece, Aden, Bahamas, United States, Canada and Brazil.

During the First World War, Wilkinson was the first to propose the use of naval camouflage, for which he coined the term " Camouflage Dazzle ". More on Charles Murray Padday

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, Middle East Artists, and visit my Boards on Pinterest

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

I do not sell art, art prints, framed posters or reproductions. Ads are shown only to compensate the hosting expenses.

If you enjoyed this post, please share with friends and family.

Thank you for visiting my blog and also for liking its posts and pages.

Please note that the content of this post primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.