More on Lowry's Rowing Paintings

About Chris Dodd’s writing from 9 October on L. S. Lowry’s rowing paintings, and Tim Koch’s take in an earlier entry posted today, Greg Denieffe writes:

I have been interested in the Lowry rowing drawings/paintings for some time now. I have prints of bits and pieces that I found over the years and unbelievable as it seems, I was able to find them the day before  yesterday – well all bar one (which from memory, I thought varied a bit from the two pencil drawings below).

I think the Bonhams’ catalogue for the May 2013 sale clarifies some dates and titles:

The present lot is almost certainly the most fully realised pencil drawing by L.S. Lowry of the Agecroft Regatta; at least one other example is known to exist, along with a later and very impressive, large oil painting, The Regatta (1949).

I think this is the one sold by Bonhams in May 2013 which is Agecroft Regatta signed and dated ‘L S Lowry 1942’ (lower right).

This could be the other pencil drawing also called Agecroft Regatta signed and dated ‘L S Lowry 1948’ (lower right).

This is the large oil painting referred to in the Bonhams’ catalogue as a later and very impressive, large oil painting, The Regatta (1949). (This is a scan of the print I have, as I cannot find a copy online).

Another Lowry, Crime Lake, showing pleasure boats on Crime Lake, Oldham, Greater Manchester. The name ‘crime’ is a local word for meadow rather than anything untoward.

I love Lowry’s work and I am a sucker for Brian and Michael’s matchstalk song.

Matchstick (Oars)men

Self-portrait by Lowry.

Tim Koch writes:

Chris Dodd’s recent piece on L.S. Lowry – “Lowry’s Grim Fairy Tale” on HTBS on 9 October –  notes that the Salford artist depicted a sculler in the detail of his painting Industrial Landscape 1950 and also some gentle leisure boating in a work entitled The Pond. There are, however, some other artworks by Lowry that are of even more interest to HTBS readers.

In 1942 or 1948 (depending on your source), he produced a painting entitled Agecroft Regatta showing two coxed fours racing on the River Irwell at Kersal Cell which is 2.5 miles / 4 km north-west of Manchester City Centre. In November 1997, it was sold to a private buyer for £350,000 / $558,400. Lowry also made two 10 inch by 15 inch sketches of the event, both very similar. One was sold in June 2011 for £68,000 / $108,500 and the other in May 2013 for £175,000 / $277,600 (a return of over 150% in two years for the earlier buyer).

One of Lowry’s sketches for Agecroft Regatta (from artdaily.com, here) The old Agecroft Rowing Club boathouse can be seen on the left with the flag flying. A club history is on the Agecroft website.

While it is a slightly more gentle scene than the artist’s usual depiction of harsh industrial life, I have found evidence that Lowry actually made the picture a little more ‘grim’ than he need have done. The website Kersalflats is dedicated to documenting the history of the area of Lower Kersal and in particular the public housing that was built there in the 1960s by the local government. Our interest lies in this page. It has a splendid collection of archive photographs of Agecroft Regatta, many from the 1950s, about ten years after Lowry made his sketches. Three of them are reproduced below as I think that they illustrate the fact that the old site of Agecroft Regatta was more attractive than that depicted by the great man.

Lowry was clearly standing to the left of this picture, looking right. The boathouse with its balcony and flag are quite clear. The house with the pitched roof to the right of the rowing club and the marquee next to that are also plain.

This picture is dated 1953, not many years after Lowry’s drawings. It does not suggest to me that (as the southern English sometimes say) ‘it's grim up north'’.

1953 again. On the left of this picture is the boathouse, the building with the pitched roof and the marquee that Lowry depicted. However, he chose to omit the delightful scene on the right – a verdant riverbank, lush fields, half-timbered buildings and rolling hills. Clearly, these were not ‘Lowryesk’ subjects.


Of course, to criticise art for not being ‘photographically accurate’ is crass. L.S. Lowry's ‘inaccuracies’ were what made him a great artist (and, perhaps, an even greater investment).

Lowry’s Grim Fairy Tale

Rowing historian and writer, Chris Dodd, believes that he has found a sculler in L. S. Lowry’s painting Industrial Landscape 1950 which right now is showing at the Tate Britain in the exhibit "Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life". Is there a sculler just above the bridge centre left of canvas? (Click on image to enlarge.)

Chris Dodd of the River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames writes,

L. S. (Lawrence Stephen) Lowry (1887-1976) was an artist who lived in Manchester and Salford all his life. He was a rent collector by day and a painter by night, attending Manchester Art College under the French impressionist Pierre Adolfe Valette, and afterwards at Salford Royal Technical College School of Art. In Lowry’s time Manchester ranked among the world’s top ten industrial cities and Lowry made the stark industrial landscapes of the Industrial Revolution his own while populating his pictures with life he observed in the streets while collecting rents, always with sketch book in hand. Lowry’s pictures now sell for millions, and a large retrospective is now showing at Tate Britain in London, "Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life", which will end on 20 October 2013.

The Pond, from Tate Britain.

Manchester didn’t rank as a major rowing place, although Agecroft Rowing Club (now in Salford docks) braved the dank River Irwell through the centre of the city from Victorian days, and the world’s great professional scullers, such as Ned Hanlan, took on the top Mancunians, such as Mark Addy, from time to time. Lowry’s sporting observations seem to be restricted to football (Bolton Wanderers supporter), cricket on waste ground and children’s street games, but I detect that one painting in the Tate show – Industrial Landscape 1950 – contains what looks like a sculler on the waterway that winds through it. Much more famous from a rowing point of view is Lowry’s The Pond, depicting a large municipal boating lake, which is also in the exhibition. Every industrial, mill and seaside town in Britain worth its salt had a boating lake from Victorian times – and many still do. For lots of Lowry canvases, visit Tate Britain or their website, here.

Another Eakins Rower

Thomas Eakins’s Wrestlers (1899) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Rowing historian William Lanouette is now editing the manuscript for his forthcoming book, Racing to Oblivion, about the Biglin brothers, Thomas Eakins and the rise and ruin of professional rowing. Doing research for his book, Bill came across a painting with a remarkable “missing” link to the sport of rowing. Bill writes,

Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) made his many rowing images between 1871, with Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, and 1874, with Oarsmen on the Schuylkill depicting a four that included Schmitt. In between, he created many sketches and pictures of the professionals John and Barney Biglin in a pair, and of John in a single. But art historians have said that his last rowing picture was that of the four on the Schuylkill.

And yet, Eakins still had rowing on his mind after 1874. A preliminary sketch for his most famous portrait, The Gross Clinic (1875), showing Dr. Samuel D. Gross in an operating theatre at Philadelphia’s Jefferson Medical College, had been worked over an image of yet another rower.

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) recently, I discovered an 1899 Eakins oil painting depicting wrestlers (see on top) clenched on a mat. But there in the background, filling fully a sixth of the canvas, was yet another rower! Not on water, but pulling a primitive erg that gained its resistance from ropes and pulleys hoisting suspended metal weights.

Although not set on water, this may be Eakins’s last rowing picture.

Bill Lanouette’s book Racing to Oblivion will be published by Harvard University Press in 2014.

19th-Century ‘Champion of the World’ Joins Steve Redgrave’s Boat at RRM

On 9 January, HTBS's Greg Denieffe wrote about an interesting painting of Edward Hawks that was up for auction at Bonhams in London. At the auction it was not revealed who the buyer was, but in a press release the River & Rowing Museum writes that it was the lucky 'winner'. The HTBS team is delighted the RRM was the museum that managed to buy it as it means that it will be on display for everyone to see. Here follows the press release which offers the story about this iconic painting, which will soon be on permanent display at the award-winning River & Rowing Museum, Henley-on-Thames.

The portrait joins other rowing memorabilia of national importance, including the Coxless Four rowed to victory by Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent at the 2000 Sydney Games, and the boat from the first Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race in 1829, which took place in Henley-on-Thames.


The River & Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames acquired an iconic 19th-century portrait of the oarsman Edward Hawks in The Gentleman’s Library sale at Bonhams, Knightsbridge. The lot, which sold for £8,000, gained widespread media attention and a great deal of interest under the hammer because of its subject’s association with Henry ('Harry') Clasper, known for revolutionising the sport of rowing.

Hawks, who is illustrated in the painting in front of Durham Cathedral, was a member of the 1845 Newcastle rowing crew, captained by Henry Clasper, Hawks’s relative, that gained notoriety by winning the ‘Champion of the World’ against prize the top Thames crew at the Thames Regatta. Henry Clasper was responsible for revolutionising the art of rowing when it was one of the most popular sports in Britain through his pioneering boat and oar designs. Among other developments he created the ‘Newcastle Oar’, which had a curved blade to create a winning advantage. From initiating his rowing career as a keel man (rowing coal barges), Clasper’s inventive designs eventually led his crew to dominate the waters of Newcastle as champions.

The painting, bought from museum funding in an exciting auction, will be on public display as part of the Museum’s permanent collection in The Schwarzenbach International Rowing Gallery from the end of February. The piece adds more depth to the museum’s extensive collection of items that relate to the history of professional rowing. The acquisition of the work was funded in equal measure by a legacy from Mr David Lunn-Rockliffe, one of the Museum’s founders and a past Chairman of Trustees, and matched by a grant from the V&A Purchase Fund.

Paul Mainds, Trustee and Chief Executive of the River & Rowing Museum Foundation says:

We are delighted to have been able to acquire such a significant painting which has already generated such interest in both the rowing world and the national press. It will be the centrepiece of display about professional rowing which was so rooted in the North East of England but which had a truly international dimension. It is a great story that deserves to be told! We are hugely grateful to the V&A Purchase Fund for their support. We also feel that this acquisition is a fitting tribute to David Lunn-Rockliffe whose legacy contributed to the purchase. His ambition for the Museum was always that it should be an international focus for rowing history and a significant centre for the visual arts.

Sam Travers, a specialist in the 19th Century Paintings department at Bonham’s commented:

There was an electric atmosphere in the saleroom and a good deal of interest in this painting. The portrait transports the viewer to a time when rowing was the major sport of the North East and figures like Edward Hawks made the Tyne famous for its innovative boat design and strong crews. With the fame and success of the crew that Edward Hawks was part of and the rarity of portraits of this type, it is no surprise that there was so much interest from private collectors and museums. I’m sure this will make a superb addition to the collection at the River & Rowing Museum.

About the portrait
The full-length portrait of Hawks in distinctive rowing strip holding a scull in his right hand is inscribed ‘Edward Hawks aged 46 years’. The picture, attributed to the English School, 19th century, depicts Durham Cathedral in the background. The rarity of this painting is to have a portrait of a professional oarsman – most pictures of pro rowing from this era are regatta scenes.

‘Ned’ Hawks was a member of the Newcastle coxed four otherwise made up of four Clasper brothers who defeated the Thames watermen at the Thames regatta in Putney in 1845 to become champions of the world. Hawks, whose niece Susannah was married to Harry Clasper, was a late replacement in the crew for another Clasper brother who was drowned in an accident.

Clasper began his working life as a pitman in Jarrow, but became a publican who designed and built racing boats. The Lord Ravenscroft used by the Tyne crew in the Thames regatta was a sleek Clasper boat, and Clasper became a dominant name among several Tyneside builders who experimented with hull shapes, outriggers and oars to move boats faster. Harry’s son, John Hawks Clasper, eventually moved the Clasper boat building business to Putney.

Hawks had a distinguished rowing career… but his life ended in tragedy when he hanged himself after running into financial problems.

For more information about the River & Rowing Museum, go here and for Bonhams, go here.

Equine Aquatics

Sultan (without cap!)

Tim Koch writes,

The wonderful picture of the Cambridge Trial Eights crews for 1896 published on HTBS on 23 November showed the coach, Henry Trevor-Jones, on his horse, Sultan. Another picture of the pair (four years later) is on the boat club website for Christ’s College, Cambridge.

I would imagine that, certainly up to the 1914–1918 War and perhaps up to the 1939–1945 War, coaching from horseback was a common thing. Horses were freely available, required less concentration and effort to manoeuvre than a bicycle and afforded a high vantage point. Even when outboard motors became available and affordable to rowing clubs, they could not be used on narrow rivers like the Cam and the Isis and coaching from the bank was (and is) the only option. The ‘Wikibook’, The Rowers of Vanity Fair, has a couple of nice pictures showing mounted coaches.

Coaching at Cambridge 1866. From The Rowers of Vanity Fair.

Coaching at Oxford, c.1897. From The Rowers of Vanity Fair.

My favourite such picture, however, must be In The Golden Days (1900) by Hugh Riviere which forms part of the War Memorial at Thames Rowing Club.

In The Golden Days.

The ever reliable British Pathe site has a few examples of horses on the tow path at Oxford and Cambridge in the 1920s and 1930s. A couple of steeds can be seen in this 1939 example from the Cambridge Lent Bumps.

CAMBRIDGE

Mounted coaching may have been indirectly responsible for one of the peculiarities of Henley Royal Regatta. The first official timing point on the course is ‘The Barrier’, a seemingly random 2,089 feet from the start. I have always understood that this was the ‘Horse Barrier’ beyond which coaches were not allowed to ride.

It would be interesting to find out who was the last person to coach from horseback and when. Perhaps someone still does? Does any HTBS reader think they know?

On The Day Of The Race

In 1903, Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly published a rowing story by Edwin Oviatt, "Atkinson No. 7 - A Story of the Yale-Harvard Race" with illustrations by Howard Giles. Oviatt was at a time the editor of Yale Alumni Weekly, and wrote the book The Beginnings of Yale (1701-1726) (1916). The 12-page story in Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly is typical for it's time. It is about 'old' Ted Atkinson, who is studying at Yale and suddenly finds himself in the crew who is going to meet Harvard. Although a spare, Ted practice hard at seven-seat. On race day, the coach picks him to row behind the stroke. Of course, thanks to Ted, the Yale crew wins the honour, if not the race.

Giles made five marvellous illustrations for this story. In the illustration above, we can see how lively the Thames River was on Race Day with steamboats, sailing yachts, and smaller sailing boats. At the Race these days, very few boats are on the river, and certainly not any spectator vessels. It's a pity, really...

The Gibson Girl Goes To The Race

In 1894 (I am not sure which month), William A. Brooks published an article, "The Harvard and Yale Boat-Race: Observations of a Harvard Man" i Harper's New Monthly Review. As a medical student at Harvard, Brooks had rowed against Yale in three races on the Thames River in New London; once in the winning boat (in 1885) and twice in the losing boat (in 1886-1887). For certain, this made Brooks very suitable to write an article about the training and racing on the Thames. However, what is really interesting with this article is the five illustrations that came with it. They are all by Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944), whose pen-and-ink sketches could be found in the major New York publications during this period.

In the time of Gibson's illustrations for Brooks's article, he had already become famous for his creation of the 'Gibson Girls' - an ideal of the young beautiful American woman. It is believed that it was Gibson's wife, Irene Langhorne and her lovely sisters that were models for Gibson's Girls. Irene was sister to the famous Nancy Astor, the first woman to take a seat as a Member of the British Parliament.

Gibson's illustration on top is called 'The Coach', while the illustration of the Gibson girl happily walking between the two Yale and Harvard rivals is called 'Going to the Race'.

Artist Nick Archer And His Rowing Art

HTBS’s Hélène Rémond, who has a warm interest for paintings and art work, has briefly talked to the British painter Nick Archer about his rowing paintings. Hélène writes,

British painter Nick Archer, born 1963, has been working on a sporting themes for some time, mainly based on film footage from the 2008 Olympic Games. He has actually worked with imagery of swimmers, cyclists and horse racing as well as rowing. “The main interest for me was to capture the movement, energy and atmosphere of the events”, Archer says.


One of these paintings - the photos attached are the studies (85 x 120 cm) of the larger paintings (153 x 183 cm) - is at the Hurlingham Clubhouse in London. The painting of the rowers at the Hurlingham was one in a series. The Hurlingham Club commissioned the large painting having seen the study. It was taken from film footage of a race between the Canadian boat and the British boat in the Olympics. “A main source of inspiration for the rowing paintings was a painting by the great American painter Thomas Eakins of a rower. I think it was called the ‘sculler’. It was the movement and how this reflected in the water which was my main interest. Also the geometric shapes created by the oars and reflected in the water which created patterns”, he explains.

You will find more about Nick Archer's work on these two websites:
www.nicholasarcher.com
www.archerart.fsnet.co.uk