SEA FOAM, THE CUTTY SARK

Oil on canvas
24 x 36 ins.

Sold @ $ 51,700

Montague Dawson, most likely the greatest sea painter of the Twentieth century, successfully harmonizes ship, sea and sky to produce enduring works of skilled composition, dynamic vigor and absolute realism.

Dawson was born in Chiswick in 1895, the son of an enthusiastic inventor and Thames yachtsman and the grandson of Henry Dawson, who was a successful landscape artist in his time.

From the earliest age Dawson seemed destined to become a painter: he always knew how to draw and to use color, and even his childhood pictures have a remarkable assurance and flair. He completed his first painting, a watercolor sunset, just after his fifth birthday and, though he never went to art school, he took every opportunity of looking at paintings and absorbing the methods of the masters.

From his father he inherited a lifelong love of the sea and ships, along with the seaman's practicality. He was fortunate in that early in his youth the family moved to Southampton Water where Dawson enjoyed fishing, sailing, and watching the great ships of the world anchoring in the harbor.

Around 1910 Dawson joined a commercial art studio where he worked on posters and developed his skill of illustration. The most lasting influence on him as a painter was that of C. Napier Hemy RA, who "opened a doorway" for the young painter. Hemy lived at Falmouth, where Dawson used to visit him as a young naval officer during the Great War.

" After that," Dawson recalled, "there was never any question of my doing anything else apart from paint." Indeed, he was always able to live on money earned from his pictures; at the age of eight he sold one for two shillings and sixpence. "I thought I was made," he said.

With the coming of the First World War it was natural for Dawson to join the Royal Navy. However, he did not allow the war to interrupt his painting and became a regular contributor to the "Sphere" magazine with pictures and reconstructions of the war at sea. In 1918 when the German fleet surrendered, a whole issue of the periodical was devoted to his portrayal of that historic event.

After the war he became a professional painter and illustrator and began to exhibit at the Royal Academy, although in latter years he was only an infrequent contributor. His reputation grew steadily so that by the 1930's he was already firmly established among the leading marine painters of the day, with a steady output and increasingly important commissions. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, presented his painting of the Royal English Yacht "Blue Bottle" to the Duke of Edinburgh. American Presidential Collections have contained examples of Dawson's work.

Dawson's method of working was to make a preliminary study of his subject on oils, based on careful research, before beginning the larger version. He called this his "fight" with the canvas. His knowledge of the sea and ships, and his dedication to technical accuracy, combined to give him complete assurance that his work was as close to a truthful representation as he could make it. When he painted, he identified himself completely with the event.

"You really are there", he said. " You can hear the sea." As he saw it, accuracy in seascape or landscape painting had little to do with photographic exactness. "But if the memory of how it looks is clear, that is what the painter has put down."

Dawson's quick, controlled brushwork gives life to his paintings, and combined with his rigorous attention to nautical details makes them instantly truthful and appealing. He researched carefully for a painting and never knowingly left an inaccuracy uncorrected even for the sake of artistic effect. The rigging, for example, is painted with minutest care, not merely in physical detail, but also in the relative tension of the ropes and intricate shadows and patterns. He would often work quickly on a picture, completing in one session a work, which up until that point might have occupied many weeks. To him, marine painting combined the freedom of landscape painting with the disciplines of portraiture; the elements may be imaginatively painted but the ship must be a likeness both in detail and in character. "You must be quite certain that she is sailing with the wind in the proper quarter - if she is on port tack, you must make sure the sails are filled from the port tack."