A Thick Night Off the Goodwins, from "Illustrated London News"
This print shows a sailor in wet weather gear and bearded companion intensely studying a chart below decks, as a woman nurses a baby and a kettle tips dangerously on a stove--the Goodwins are dangerous shoals off the east coast of Kent. Smythe, a painter of landscape and rustic genre had begun exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1863 and Jackson's wood engraving reproduces a work he showed there in 1869. The subject had been suggested by an article in the periodical "Household Words." As he worked out the composition, Smythe consulted with his stepbrother, the marine painter William Lionel Wyllie, made studies in a schooner on the Thames, and had a sloping platform constructed in his family's house in London. Smythe's watercolor version of the subject is now at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
Artwork Details
- Title: A Thick Night Off the Goodwins, from "Illustrated London News"
- Series/Portfolio: Illustrated London News
- Engraver: Mason Jackson (British, Ovingham, Northumberland 1819–1903 London)
- Artist: After Lionel Percy Smythe (British, London 1839–1918 Wimereux)
- Date: December 4, 1869
- Medium: Wood engraving
- Dimensions: Sheet: 9 7/8 × 12 1/2 in. (25.1 × 31.8 cm)
- Classification: Prints
- Credit Line: Gift of Donato Esposito, 2013
- Object Number: 2013.609.6
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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