Tag: ben nicholson

Victorian racing yacht Germaine relaunched after many years at the IBTC

Germaine relaunched 1

 

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The 1882 Nicholson racing yacht Germaine has been relaunched following a long restoration at the International Boatbuilding Training Centre at Lowestoft.

Once she is fully rigged and has her new suit of sails she will sail to her new home in Brittany.

Germaine was designed by Ben Nicholson for a prominent racer, Mr FW Leybourne Popham.

After being photographed by Beken, she sailed to the Med in December 1882 and returned in the spring of 1883, passed to Mr Harvey A Dixon, who rigged her as a cutter. She was later made into a yawl again, and passed through further changes of ownership – later owners were Major Middleton Robinson and Mr HW Whittingham of Goodmayes, Essex. In the early 60s she was found on the banks of the Blackwater by Ann and Peter Christgau, who refloated and cleaned her, and sold her in the mid-1960s.

Eventually she returned to the Camper and Nicholson yard, where she was to be repaired ready for the yard’s bicentenary celebrations. Sadly the yard got into financial difficulties and the project had to be abandoned.

Germaine’s cause was then taken up by Patrick Bigand, who acquired her and transported her to the IBTC in 1997 for restoration.

The restoration took quite some time, and I gather that she leaves quite a space in the College’s premises, having been there for two decades, but it must be wonderful for the staff and students to see her back on the water.

PS – Donan Raven points out that there’s some good material about Germaine here – and that it includes a set of lines, two Beken photos and some shots of the IBTC restoration. Thanks Donan!

Alfred Wallis, artist and chandler of St Ives

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Examples of Alfred Wallis’s work. Click on each one
for a larger image

Like most other areas of human activity, the art establishment tends to favour its own – so no matter how bohemian they may be, most artists are cultured and educated, and quite often rather posh. But every now and again the art establishment finds an artist whose work it finds so interesting and charming that the usual rules no longer apply. Beryl Cook was one of these – and Alfred Wallis was another.

Wallis seems to have had many roles – he was first a basket-maker, then a hand on merchant seaman, then a deep-sea fisherman, and then ran a business as marine stores dealer in St Ives, buying scrap iron, sails, rope and other items until his business closed in 1912. He then went to work for a local antiques dealer, an experience that may provided some understanding of the world of objets d’art.

He seems to have begun painting in earnest after his wife died. Short of money as he was, he painted on whatever objects came to hand and his subjects were often seascapes painted from memories going back to the era before the steamships took over from sail.

Life changed for him in 1928 when a group of artists led by Christopher Wood and Ben Nicholson set up the well known artists’ colony in the little town, for their arrival led to Wallis’s discovery by the art world.

Recognition doesn’t seem to have brought riches, for he eventually died in the workhouse in Penzance, but  Wallises are now highly collectible, and the artist behind them has become a legend. I gather that examples of his work have even been minaturised and made into fridge magnets…

Read all about Alfred Wallis and see the galleries of his work at http://www.alfredwallis.org.uk.

Wallis meets Ben Nicholson in 1928,
photographed by Christopher Wood