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FRANCIS NICHOLSON (1753-1844) - Receive artist alerts » - More items from this artist »
Shipwreck Below Scarborough Castle (1793 England)
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Medium
Watercolour
Signed/Inscribed/DatedSigned on mount, lower left, 'F. Nicholson 1793'
Dimensions16.50inch wide 11.75inch high (41.91 cm wide 29.84 cm high)
ProvenancePrivate collection
Description / Expertise
In the late 18th century Scarborough was the premier seaside resort on the east coast of England.
Althought Nicholson never lived there himself, he had a regular clientele among its visitors, and views of Scarborough were a staple throughout most of his long career.
This watercolour, dated 1973, may well be the earliest of several versions of the composition showing a vessel being buffeted against the sea wall, to the evident alarm of the impotent onlookers. Only the figure on the right, a dark, isolated silhouette, underlines by his stillness the likely sombre outcome of the turbulent scene.
In a later variant at Yale, the figures include a cluster of women, one of them overcome by the horror of the event, stirring up among Nicholson's female admirers the strong emotions which could be experienced through painting when the reality would have been too hard to bear.
Nicholson must indeed have found this subject a profitable one; he included a 'Scarborough Castle, with a shipwreck' in the first exhibition of the Society of Painters in Watercolours in 1805 (probably the large version dated 1803 in the Victoria & Albert Museum, one of two in that collection alone; another, of similarly impressive scale, was sold at Christie's, 16 March 1982, lot 73).
Works with similar titles were shown in 1808 and again in 1811. the depiction of Scarborough Castle was used by Nicholson as one of his 'Six views of Scarborough', a set of lithographs published in 1822.
gbp 6500 (Pound Sterling)
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