WHYTE'S EXCEPTIONAL IRISH ART MONDAY 7 DECEMBER 2020

EXCEPTIONAL IRISH ART ·7 DECEMBER 2020 AT 6PM 63 as Osborne, andWilliam Llewellyn, 1886. Artists were drawn to the estuary with its timber sea wall, the village and surrounding landscape, and the beach. But Osborne represents the majestic old South Harbour wall at the mouth of the River Blyth looking west towards Blythburgh.6 He gives A tale of the Sea a joyous naturalistic treatment, with figures in contemporary dress, and careful representation of every part of the picture: the folds of the boys’ smocks, the textures of straw-hats and wickerwork baskets, weathered timber planks and rusting metal cogs, and the sunlight on the distant boats. At the same time, he evokes a sense of light and atmosphere. He employs a muted yet warm, palette throughout the canvas. The timber boards in the foreground and the back of the boy’s smock are conveyed with a multitude of hues, and the sparkling blue, white and pink of the waves seem to reflect the sky. The whites of the boys’ ganseys are repeated in the sail of the toy boat, the figures behind and the sea birds; the pinks of the rooftops in the rusting metal; and the blues of the water in the bands around the hats. A Tale of the Sea captures the life of Walberswick in its heyday. The pier and the wall were rebuilt in 1904, but severely damaged by storms. Osborne’s other major contemporary canvases include An October Morning, 1884 (Guildhall Art Gallery, London) which is set on the north side of the River Blyth and shows children and fisherfolk on the beach and pier, and The Poacher, set in an inland landscape, but featuring two boys with similar costumes and poses. A Tale of the Sea was exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin in 1885. The critic in the Dublin University Review wrote enthusiastically about, “the artist’s recent visit to Suffolk. There is much knowledge of boy character in this picture. The feeling of atmosphere about the distance is admirably rendered…”. 7 Osborne made a small black and white drawing after the painting, which was reproduced in the Art Supplement of the Dublin University Review, one of the first occasions when his work was published. He proudly cut out this illustration and added it to one of his sketchbooks. (NGI, catalogue no. 19, 201) Dr Julian Campbell November 2020 Footnotes: 1 . E.g. A Tale of the Sea, An October Morning, and possible The Poachers; Boy on a Beach, An Artist Sketching (Nathaniel Hill), On The Pier, Walberswick, Across the River, Walberswick, andWalberswick, Early Morning; A Study of the Sea near Southwold, Sketch near Southwold, and On the Sands, Southwold. 2.. See Christiana Payne, Where the Sea Meets the Edge, Artists on The Coast in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Bristol, 2007. 3. See W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn, London 1998. 4. E.g. Edward Fitzgerald was in Dunwich in the 1850’s, working on his translations, and Nathaniel Hone was painting at Lowestoft in the 1890’s. 5. See Richard Scott, Artists at Walberswick. East Anglia Interludes, 1880-2000, Bristol, 2002; Ian Collins, Making Waves, Artists in Southwold, Norwich, 2005; Richard Scott, ‘Walberswick, An eye for the Quiet of Nature’ in Painting at the Edge. British Coastal Art Colonies 1880-1930, ed. Laura Newton, Bristol 2005 6. Information kindly supplied by David de Krester, (correspondence, 5 Jan 2008). 7. Dublin University Review. Art Supplement, 1885, p.12 1