.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
From 1912 onwards Steer turned his attention from landscapes to harbour and coastal scenes. It was, in a sense, a return to his early subject matter - except that the groups of girls who picked their way among the pebbles at Southwold or Boulogne twenty years earlier are no longer present and the beach holiday atmosphere has been replaced by a calm concentration on small coastal craft tied up at piers and jetties. Indeed, as Philip Connard recalled, Steer now avoided children completely, found passers-by a distraction and was intensely irritated by the constant interruptions of petty officials when he was working at Dover harbour in 1918 as a war artist. On painting forays to Porchester, Harwich, Bosham, Alum Bay, Maldon and Southampton Water his only companions would be lifelong friends and colleagues, Professor Fred Brown and Ronald Gray, from the Slade School of Fine Art.
Visiting Hythe on Southampton Water in September 1921, the trio stayed at the comfortable Drummond Arms Hotel from where the painter wrote to Henry Tonks, that following a recent illness he had finally got to work and was,
'...beginning to find out the possibilities of a not too promising place which affords nothing in the way of landscape, as this country is far too bunged up with trees, so we are entirely dependent on the large ship-building yard where we have a good place to work inside. We can also boast a pier nearly half a mile long on which Brown disports himself as he says it does not wear his boots out and he also knows exactly how many yards he has done, a kind of measured exercise which seems to give him much satisfaction...'1
Seven oils from the Southampton sojourn are known. All are painted on canvases of similar dimensions to those of the present example, and some may have been painted from a first floor window at the Drummond Arms. Most are simple views of passing ships entitled Southampton Water. That in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, shows the docks of Southampton port in the distance, while another depicts the harbour entrance.2
The present picture, the most complex work in the series, depicts the boat repair yard lying to the side of the pier - Steer's ship-building yard' from the Tonks letter. A watercolour, produced at the same time, with a small steamboat tied up on its far side, tends to confirm this.3 From here, a ferry, possibly the steamboat in the picture, took the three artists to Southampton for shopping trips and on one of these Steer picked up what he believed to be a sea-piece by Van der Velde in a local emporium.4 However, it was Turner, rather than the Dutch painter, who remained in Steer's mind as he painted. The picturesque ruins of the Wye, the Tees and the Teme were now replaced by atmospheric studies recording the 'Harbours of England'.
Roger Fry, writing about Steer's retrospective exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in 1924 was of the opinion that his recent work, including two examples from the Southampton Water sojourn, should have been shown separately from his early pictures.
'...They demand for their appreciation a greater effort on the spectator's part. Their remarkable qualities are not immediately apparent. In some ways they show a return to quite early work: mainly perhaps, in the extreme simplicity of the presentment, the absence of any premeditated approach or search for effective display of motive. On the other hand, they are far more unemphatic and undemonstrative in colour. No doubt in process of years the artist's eye has got tired of all the more striking harmonies, and he seeks for ever subtler and more difficult chords. Above all he has in course of time perfected his methods of abbreviated statement. These landscapes are reduced to a surprisingly small number of tones chosen with such a sense of their significance that they suffice to evoke the effect...'5
Steer's late 'impressions', like those of Turner, are characterised by an extraordinary economy of means. Gone indeed is "the more brilliant colouring" of his early work. But in its place is a sonorous mood music drawn from motifs found within walking distance of a comfortable hotel. Horizons are uniformly low; masts are adroitly placed; much attention is paid to the sky and an occasional smoke-stack, recalling classic Turners, colours the still air with plumes of grey and blue.
1 D.S. MacColl, The Life, Work and Setting of Philip Wilson Steer, 1945, Faber and Faber Ltd, p. 95-6. The hotel, he wrote in September 1921, was "very comfortable...the food excellent and not too rich". The Drummond Arms, a grade II listed building, facing the pier was converted to apartments in 2002.
2 Of the Southampton Steers, one is in the NG Victoria, Melbourne (Laughton 571A), one is in the Thomas J Watson Museum, USA (Laughton, 569), and another Southampton Water (Laughton, 568) is that sold in Christie's in 1967. A fourth painting, Southampton Water (Passing Storm) (Laughton, 570) seems unlikely since the present work does not depict a passing storm. This leaves three possibilities - one which passed through the Fine Art Society before 1971 (Laughton, 572), another, Harbour Entrance, Southampton (Laughton, 571) and A Shipyard, Southampton Water (Laughton, 573). Of these, the last two are favoured; one because it looks towards the shipping channel beyond the yacht moorings in the foreground; the other, primarily because of its consonance with the watercolour; see note 3.
3 Two further watercolours should be considered in relation to the present work. These are Hythe (sold Sotheby's 6 October 1993), another view of the pier from the same location and The Solent (sold Sotheby's 19 November 2008), a view of the pier from the Southampton side, stretching out into Southampton Water and the Solent beyond. The iron pier was opened in 1881 and is 640 metres long. In 1909 it was fitted with tracks to remove luggage from the ferries. This was upgraded to a narrow gauge railway the year after Steer's picture was painted. See https://www.hythe-hants.org.uk/Hythe-History/Hythe-History-Homepage.html
4 Brown disputed the authenticity of this junkshop 'find' and apparently considered the sea to be 'too woolly'. Ferry services at Hythe date back to the sixteenth-century. In Steer's day, there were three small steamships run by the General Estates Company, and owned by the Percy family (Dukes of Northumberland), see https://www.simplonpc.co.uk/Hythe_Soton.html
5 Quoted in MacColl, 1945, pp. 184-5.
K Mc.
Visiting Hythe on Southampton Water in September 1921, the trio stayed at the comfortable Drummond Arms Hotel from where the painter wrote to Henry Tonks, that following a recent illness he had finally got to work and was,
'...beginning to find out the possibilities of a not too promising place which affords nothing in the way of landscape, as this country is far too bunged up with trees, so we are entirely dependent on the large ship-building yard where we have a good place to work inside. We can also boast a pier nearly half a mile long on which Brown disports himself as he says it does not wear his boots out and he also knows exactly how many yards he has done, a kind of measured exercise which seems to give him much satisfaction...'
Seven oils from the Southampton sojourn are known. All are painted on canvases of similar dimensions to those of the present example, and some may have been painted from a first floor window at the Drummond Arms. Most are simple views of passing ships entitled Southampton Water. That in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, shows the docks of Southampton port in the distance, while another depicts the harbour entrance.
The present picture, the most complex work in the series, depicts the boat repair yard lying to the side of the pier - Steer's ship-building yard' from the Tonks letter. A watercolour, produced at the same time, with a small steamboat tied up on its far side, tends to confirm this.
Roger Fry, writing about Steer's retrospective exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in 1924 was of the opinion that his recent work, including two examples from the Southampton Water sojourn, should have been shown separately from his early pictures.
'...They demand for their appreciation a greater effort on the spectator's part. Their remarkable qualities are not immediately apparent. In some ways they show a return to quite early work: mainly perhaps, in the extreme simplicity of the presentment, the absence of any premeditated approach or search for effective display of motive. On the other hand, they are far more unemphatic and undemonstrative in colour. No doubt in process of years the artist's eye has got tired of all the more striking harmonies, and he seeks for ever subtler and more difficult chords. Above all he has in course of time perfected his methods of abbreviated statement. These landscapes are reduced to a surprisingly small number of tones chosen with such a sense of their significance that they suffice to evoke the effect...'
Steer's late 'impressions', like those of Turner, are characterised by an extraordinary economy of means. Gone indeed is "the more brilliant colouring" of his early work. But in its place is a sonorous mood music drawn from motifs found within walking distance of a comfortable hotel. Horizons are uniformly low; masts are adroitly placed; much attention is paid to the sky and an occasional smoke-stack, recalling classic Turners, colours the still air with plumes of grey and blue.
K Mc.