MONTAGUE DAWSON
Chiswick 1895 - 1973 Midhurst, Sussex
Ref: CC 151
Racing offshore
Signed lower left: MONTAGUE DAWSON
Oil on canvas: 24 ¼ x 44 ¼ in / 61.6 x 112.4 cm
Frame size: 31 x 51 in / 78.7 x 129.5 cm
Painted circa 1950
Provenance:
Elizabeth Briggs Fisher Trust;
private collection, Michigan, USA
Montague Dawson grew up on Southampton Water, the son of a keen yachtsman. Yacht racing provided him with many subjects for paintings. He combined a technical understanding of yachts with an ability to evoke light and weather conditions. The low line of hills in the background suggests that these vessels are racing in the Solent, off the Isle of Wight. Dawson chooses a low viewpoint, so that we are caught up in the excitement of the leader and pursuer straining for every advantage of wind and current in the search for victory. A choppy, turquoise-green sea glitters beneath a blue sky full of scudding clouds.
MONTAGUE DAWSON, RSMA, FRSA
Chiswick 1895 - 1973 Midhurst, Sussex
Montague Dawson was the son of a keen yachtsman and the grandson of the marine painter Henry Dawson (1811-1878). Much of his childhood was spent on Southampton Water where he was able to indulge his interest in the study of ships. For a brief period around 1910 Dawson worked for a commercial art studio in London, but with the outbreak of the First World War he joined the Royal Navy. Whilst serving with the Navy in Falmouth he met Charles Napier Hemy (1841-1917), who considerably influenced his work. Dawson was present at the final surrender of the German Grand Fleet and many of his illustrations depicting the event were published in the Sphere.
After the War, Dawson established himself as a professional marine artist, concentrating on historical subjects and portraits of deep-water sailing ships often in stiff breeze or on high seas. During the Second World War, he was employed as a war artist and again worked for the Sphere. Dawson exhibited regularly at the Royal Society of Marine Artists, of which he became a member, from 1946 to 1964, and occasionally at the Royal Academy between 1917 and 1936. By the 1930s he was considered one of the greatest living marine artists, whose patrons included two American Presidents, Dwight D Eisenhower and Lyndon B Johnson, as well as the British Royal Family.
The work of Montague Dawson is represented in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich and the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth.
