Cinque Ports watercolours by Jack Merriot

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The Cinque Port of Hythe

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The Cinque Port of Sandwich

We have some jolly railwayiana this morning. High-class award-winning amateur boatbuilder, unassuming Sage of the Little Green Shed and man with strong railway connections, Chris Perkins has put a series of five scans of a series of prints commissioned for the railways of Cinque Ports by the artist Jack Merriot on his website StrathkanChris’s Little World.

He suggested intheboatshed.net should link to them, knowing full well that I can’t resist a nice old-fashioned artworks like these. See the full set, as well as some immaculate boats built to Iain Oughtred plans and the first build of the new Michael Storer Raid boat at Chris’s website.

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Pierhead painter Reuben Chappell watercolour arrives at the NMMC

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The Jane Slade watercolour by Reuben Chappell

Mrs Adams presents the painting to museum staff

The National Maritime Museum Cornwall has been presented with a watercolour of the Jane Slade by Reuben Chappell. The donation came from Mrs G Adams, whose husband was given the painting by Ernie Slade of Slade’s Boatyard, and came with book entitled Practical Navigation.

The museum’s notes on the painting reveal that the Jane Slade was named after the only woman shipbuilder in Cornwall, and that she who took control of her family’s business on her husband’s death in 1870. Her legacy lived on through successive generations of shipbuilders, repairers and mariners and in this ship named after her. Jane’s story inspired Daphne du Maurier’s first novel The Loving Spirit.

Reuben Chappell (1870-1940) is one of this country’s best known pierhead painters. An artist who spent his entire working life making portraits of ships for seamen, his work is in the best tradition of pierhead painting painted not for galleries or art collectors, but for the men whose lives and livelihoods were intimately entwined with the subjects of the painting.

Chappell lived and painted in Cornwall from 1904 until his death in 1940.

The book dated 1852 is believed to have been owned by Jane Slade’s son Thomas, one-time captain of the schooner. Inserted inside are four pages which relate to Thomas receiving his Master Mariners Certificate headed Plymouth School of Science and Navigation – these are an extremely rare find.

Yacht – a collection of Michael Frith’s watercolours of the classic fleet of yachts

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Michael Frith yacht paintings

Michael Frith yacht paintings Yacht - a collection of Michael Frith’s watercolours of the classic fleet of yachts Yacht - a collection of Michael Frith’s watercolours of the classic fleet of yachts

Yacht - a collection of Michael Frith’s watercolours of the classic fleet of yachts Yacht - a collection of Michael Frith’s watercolours of the classic fleet of yachts Yacht - a collection of Michael Frith’s watercolours of the classic fleet of yachts

Paintings and sketches from the pages of Michael Frith’s book Yacht

Yacht is a hand-bound limited-edition book of prints of well known classic yachts painted by the renowned watercolourist Michael Frith, and inspired by the America’s Cup Jubilee event at Cowes in July 2001.

A sailor since childhood, Frith attended the event as crew on the last wooden Nicholson yacht, Quiver V (1969), which gave him the opportunity to view many of the 150 yachts present in close-up action. The sight moved him to begin recording the boats in paintings, a project that has since taken him to the Mediterranean and the Carribbean.

As readers will see, his vividly coloured paintings and sketches capture the characters of the boats, and very often something of the thrill of sailing them.

The book includes a foreword by Harry Spencer of Spencer Rigging and an essay by Dan Houston, editor of Classic Boat, and includes a pictorial index of the names and specifications of the yachts that appear in the paintings. It runs to 160 A3 landscape pages, and each of the 1000 copies is signed and numbered by the artist.

About the artist: Michael Frith has worked for many national newspapers including Newsweek, TIME, The Times and The Sunday Times. He has held 25 solo exhibitions, and his paintings form part of many private and public collections, including the National Portrait Gallery and the Bank of England.

The book is priced at £400.00 plus postage and packing, and orders can be placed through the publisher’s website http://www.spotred.co.uk.

Have you any artworks you would like to share with intheboatshed.net readers? Email us now at gmatkin@gmail.com.


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