Watercolor and pen and brown ink on medium, slightly textured, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 7 7/8 x 11 3/4 inches (20 x 29.8 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Signed and dated in pen and brown ink, lower right: "W Anderson 1797"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1975.3.1090
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
cliffs | boats | ships | frigates | frigate | pilot | marine (soldier) | marine art | coast
Associated Places:
Dover | United Kingdom | England | Kent | The Downs
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
Spreading Canvas - Eighteenth - Century British Marine Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2016-09-09 - 2016-12-04)The Line of Beauty : British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century (Yale Center for British Art, 2001-05-19 - 2001-08-05)Masters of the Sea - British Marine Watercolors (Yale Center for British Art, 1987-06-10 - 1987-08-02)Masters of the Sea - British Marine Watercolors (National Maritime Museum, 2005-08-25 - 2005-10-25)
Publications:
Eleanor Hughes, Spreading Canvas : Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2016, p. 273-274, cat. 133, ND 1373.G74 S67 2016 (YCBA)Roger Quarm, Masters of the sea : British marine watercolours, , Phaidon, Oxford, UK, 1987, pp. 22, 92, no. 58, color pl. 9, ND2272 G7 Q73 (YCBA)Scott Wilcox, Line of beauty : British drawings and watercolors of the eighteenth century, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2001, pg.88, cat. no. 70, NC228 W53 2001 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
The setting of this watercolor can be identified as the area known as the Downs, off the southeast coast of England in the county of Kent. The Downs had long been used as a safe anchorage for shipping, sheltered to the north and west by the coast, and to the east by the ten-mile-long sandbanks known as the Goodwin Sands. These and other constantly shifting shoals in the area posed a hazard to vessels and necessitated the guidance of knowledgeable pilots to navigate the passage between safe anchorage and open water. Here a frigate awaits a pilot; in Charles Brooking’s related painting Shipping in the English Channel (ca. 1755), a ship has just dropped the pilot who guided it out of the anchorage and is setting off to open sea. Gallery label for Spreading Canvas - Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2016-09-09 - 2016-12-04)