Charles Napier Hemy
Ironclads, 1904
Watercolour and tempera on paper
44.5 x 67.3 cm (17 1/2 x 26 1/2 ins.) Framed: 70 x 93.5 cm (27 1/2 x 36 3/4 ins.)
Charles Napier Hemy 1841-1917
Under a Spread of Sails, 1905
Oil on board
46.4 x 69.2 cm (18 1/4 x 27 1/4 ins.)
Available to buy
Provenance
With Roger King Fine Art, Newport, Rhode Island.
Private collection.
This dynamic oil painting by Charles Napier Hemy pictures a Plymouth Trawler in full sail beating a path through the heavy swell. Plymouth trawlers were based out of Sutton Harbour, but did not fish exclusively from Plymouth and regularly visited and operated temporarily from Cornish ports, including Falmouth where Hemy was based. Their owners and crews benefitted greatly from a dedicated wholesale fish market that opened 9 years earlier in Plymouth’s Barbican. However, during the late winter and spring months these trawlers followed fish stocks like mackerel and herring into Cornish waters employing Falmouth, Penzance and Newlyn as harbours of refuge and landing points. Here they sheltered from winter gales, took on suppliers, even landed catches for transport back to the Barbican market via Great Western Railway’s new network – and of course, gave Charles Napier Hemy a welcome subject matter.
In Under a Spread of Sails we see Hemy’s signature compositional strategy of positioning the boat off-centre – thrashing its way towards the canvas edge and thus heightening the sense of movement and speed. This is then compositionally balanced by another boat glimpsed over the approaching swell, and deftly executed with a few strokes of the artist’s brush. Hemy has made wonderful use of Viridian green to capture the light through the caps of the sea swells. The artist’s position is low in the trough of the swell. In this way Hemy places the viewer in the best position to perceive the drama of the boat’s passage, and sense the peril faced by the fishermen in these high seas.
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