signed lower left, oil on canvas, 101.5cm x 76cm
Provenance: Messrs Frost & Reed, Albany Court Yard, Piccadilly, London W1
Purchased from Lawrence’s, 13th October 1994, lot 50
the collection of the late Mervyn Stewkesbury.
| Estimate: | £12,000 - £15,000 |
Port Jackson
The Port Jackson was built in 1882 by Messrs Hall of Aberdeen for Duthie Bros and was intended for the Australian trade. As a specimen of an iron ship of this era, she was hard to beat. On her maiden passage she reached Sydney 77 days out from the Channel, being the first four masted barque to make the trip in under 80 days. She continued to hold her own against the steam tramp until 1904, being laid up in the Thames and then bought by Messrs Devitt and Moore.
In 1906 they contracted to take 100 Warspite boys out to Australia and back as a training venture and for the next seven years as a cadet training ship. She was finally torpedoed by a German U boat in 1917.
See Lubbock B. Sail: The Romance of the Clipper Ships 1972.
Montague Dawson
Born in Chiswick in West London in 1895, Montague Dawson was the grandson of the eminent Victorian landscape painter Henry Dawson (1811-1878). He studied under the celebrated seascape artist Charles Napier Hemy (1841–1917) at the Royal Academy and also worked in an art school in Bedford Row. Dawson joined the navy during World War I and painted naval battles for illustrated magazines. He first met his mentor, Hemy, while on leave from the Royal Navy and frequented his studio in Falmouth, Cornwall. Hemy advised the young Dawson, “You must follow after me and you must do better than me.”
After the war Dawson became a frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy and began a life-long exclusive relationship with the London gallery Frost & Reed. He was also an associate of the Royal Society of Artists and a member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists. He was appointed as an official war artist during World War II.
