Literature
Dublin University Review, Art Supplement, March 1885, p.12 (illustrated);
Bodkin, Thomas, Four Irish Landscape Painters, Dublin and London, 1920, Appendix XI, p.119;
Sheehy, Jeanne, Walter Osborne, Ballycotton, Cork, 1974, no.116, p.118;
Collins, Ian, Making Waves, Artists in Southwold, Norwich, 2005, p.71 (illustrated)
Notes
In his painting A Tale of the Sea Walter Osborne depicts a group of boys gathered upon a wide pier on a sunny day. They are clad in sunhats, plain white smocks or ganseys, and brown trousers. The three figures in the foreground are relaxing, chatting and, with large wicker baskets to hand, waiting for the fishing boats to come in, so that they can unload the catch. They may be telling 'tales of the sea', in the manner of seasoned mariners, but at present, their baskets are empty. A toy boat lying beside them indicates that some of them are little more than children. Behind them are wooden structures, red-roofed buildings and the harbour with fishing boats whose masts point up to the sky. Osborne represents the scene with meticulous Realism, observing the fall of sunlight and shadow, recording every detail, yet also showing his mastery in evoking space and atmosphere. The picture is painted in a subdued palette of off-whites, browns, ochres and greys, combined with glowing golds, blues, and gentle pinks and plums.
In the centre of the composition, a youth sits, his back to the viewer and his feet bare. He wears a sunhat and braces, and behind him are a jacket and a fishing basket on its side. His hand is outstretched, pointing to the sea. To his left a child with cap sits listening, his hand resting on the pier, while to the right an older boy stands sturdily in sunlight, facing the storyteller. One hand holds a basket, the other is in his pocket, and he wears lace-up boots. A fourth figure sits against a shed in the background, enjoying the sunshine, and lost in thought.
Behind are two strange upright structures of wood and metal - devices with which to haul in heavy fishing nets, but now looking rusting and unused, and a tall shed of dark timber. To the left is flat sand while to the right is the harbour, its choppy water reflecting the sky and clouds, while seabirds hover. The old wooden pier and fence retreat away from us, and a girl and boy can be seen chatting. Beyond them are red-roofed buildings and a glimpse of deep blue sea. The upper part of the canvas is taken up by a hazy sky and cumulous clouds.
A Tale of the Sea is set at Walberswick on the Suffolk coast. After his exciting student years in Dublin and Antwerp and painting in the open-air in Brittany, Osborne worked intensively in English villages, often in the company of fellow-artists. He arrived in Walberswick and Southwold in 1884, and painted a number of major canvases and smaller pictures there.[1] One shows his Irish friend Nathaniel Hill seated, painting.
Today Walberswick is a quiet settlement of low-lying buildings on the estuary of the river Blyth. Yet in the nineteenth century it was an important fishing port, and it became one of the leading artist colonies in England. With its poetic title and genre detail A Tale of the Sea belongs with the popular tradition of seaside subjects with fisher folk in English 19th century painting and poetry.[2] With its setting by the sea and listening children Osborne pays homage to John E. Millan's celebrated painting The Boyhood of Raleigh, 1876-77 (Tate Britain).
The Suffolk coast with its fishing and trading ports such as Lowestoft, Southwold, Walberswick, Dunwich and Aldeburgh, river estuaries, and inland villages such as Blythburgh and Snape, marshes and medieval churches, was one of the most ancient and mysterious parts of East Anglia, attracting artists, writers and musicians.[4] But it was subject to storms and erosion, and Dunwich, for example, disappeared beneath the waves.
Artists had been visiting Southwold and Walberswick, accessible by ferry across the river Blyth, since the early 19th century. But with the arrival of a railway branch line at the former town in 1879 and at Walberswick in 1881, the 1880s became a golden age for the artistic communities there.[5] Amongst the prominent visitors were Edwin Hayes, at Southwold c.1876, Augustus Burke (Osborne's teacher in Dublin), Hill and the English painters Henry Moore, W. Blandford Fletcher, Fred Hall, Edward Scott and Philip Wilson Steer, some of them arriving in 1884, the same year as Osborne, and William Llewellyn, 1886.
Artists were drawn to the estuary with its timber sea wall, the village and surrounding landscape, and the beach. But Osborne represents the majestic old South Harbour wall at the mouth of the River Blyth looking west towards Blythburgh.[6] He gives A tale of the Sea a joyous naturalistic treatment, with figures in contemporary dress, and careful representation of every part of the picture: the folds of the boys' smocks, the textures of straw-hats and wickerwork baskets, weathered timber planks and rusting metal cogs, and the sunlight on the distant boats. At the same time, he evokes a sense of light and atmosphere. He employs a muted yet warm, palette throughout the canvas. The timber boards in the foreground and the back of the boy's smock are conveyed with a multitude of hues, and the sparkling blue, white and pink of the waves seem to reflect the sky. The whites of the boys' ganseys are repeated in the sail of the toy boat, the figures behind and the sea birds; the pinks of the rooftops in the rusting metal; and the blues of the water in the bands around the hats.
A Tale of the Sea captures the life of Walberswick in its heyday. The pier and the wall were rebuilt in 1904, but severely damaged by storms. Osborne's other major contemporary canvases include An October Morning, 1884 (Guildhall Art Gallery, London) which is set on the north side of the River Blyth and shows children and fisherfolk on the beach and pier, and The Poacher, set in an inland landscape, but featuring two boys with similar costumes and poses. A Tale of the Sea was exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin in 1885. The critic in the Dublin University Review wrote enthusiastically about,
"the artist's recent visit to Suffolk. There is much knowledge of boy character in this picture. The feeling of atmosphere about the distance is admirably rendered…". 7
Osborne made a small black and white drawing after the painting, which was reproduced in the Art Supplement of the Dublin University Review, one of the first occasions when his work was published. He proudly cut out this illustration and added it to one of his sketchbooks. (NGI, catalogue no. 19, 201)
Dr Julian Campbell
November 2020
Footnotes:
1. E.g. A Tale of the Sea, An October Morning, and possible The Poachers; Boy on a Beach, An Artist Sketching (Nathaniel Hill), On The Pier, Walberswick, Across the River, Walberswick, and Walberswick, Early Morning; A Study of the Sea near Southwold, Sketch near Southwold, and On the Sands, Southwold.
2. See Christiana Payne, Where the Sea Meets the Edge, Artists on The Coast in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Bristol, 2007.
3. See W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn, London 1998.
4. E.g. Edward Fitzgerald was in Dunwich in the 1850's, working on his translations, and Nathaniel Hone was painting at Lowestoft in the 1890's.
5. See Richard Scott, Artists at Walberswick. East Anglia Interludes, 1880-2000, Bristol, 2002; Ian Collins, Making Waves, Artists in Southwold, Norwich, 2005; Richard Scott, 'Walberswick, An eye for the Quiet of Nature' in Painting at the Edge. British Coastal Art Colonies 1880-1930, ed. Laura Newton, Bristol 2005
6. Information kindly supplied by David de Krester, (correspondence, 5 Jan 2008).
7. Dublin University Review. Art Supplement, 1885, p.12
