Studio RT Ltd

Description

This is a dramatic watercolour by the well known watercolourist Henry George Hine VPRI, who has signed the painting H.G. Hine in the lower left hand corner and dated it 1886. The watercolour portrays a distant shipwreck silhouetted against the last vestiges of the sunset as it drops below the horizon. There is an empty, damaged rowing boat beneath the swell of a large wave and some seagulls wheeling above. The artist has managed to convey with the use of subtle colour the gradual encroachment of dusk over the scene.

Henry George Hine was born in Brighton on 15th August 1811, the son of a coachman and his wife Mary. He taught himself to draw and paint and was inspired by the paintings of Copley Fielding that belonged to a local vicar who encouraged him in his endeavours. He painted in Sussex for some years, before becoming apprenticed as a draughtsman to Henry Meyer in London. After this he left and spent two years in Rouen. He returned to Brighton, then Lond where became a wood engraver and did cartoons and illustrations for Punch until 1844, then other magazines including The Illustrated London News. He then began to concentrate on landscape paintings almost exclusively in watercolours, often of Sussex and coastal scenes executed with great fineness and delicacy.

He was elected an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour in 1863, then full Member in 1864 and he became their Vice President from 1888-1895, the year of his death.

He married Mary Ann Egerton in 1840 and they had ten daughters and four sons. One of his daughters was a portrait painter, another an art student, but two of his sons became artists, Henry William, who called himself Harry Hine to distinguish his work from that of his father's and William Egerton Hine, who became Art Master at Harrow School. We also have available a Sussex watercolour by Harry Hine.

The family lived at various addresses in Kentish Town, Park Road, Hampstead, Haverstock Hill, Hampstead and Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead where Henry died aged 84.

He is listed in The Dictionary of British Artists (Collectors' Club), The Dictionary of Victorian Painters by Christopher Wood and The Dictionary of British Watercolour Artists by H. L Mallalieu and has his own page on Wikipedia.

The painting has been double mounted in two tone acid free mountboard and is framed in a dull silver 1 1/8" frame to suit. It will be supplied wired and ready to hang.

Image size: 12 3/4" x 9" - 32.4cm x 22.85cm

Frame size: 20 1/2" x 17 3/16" - 52.1cm x 43.65cm

Medium: Watercolours

Condition: Very good. There is no foxing or fading. The mounts and frame are new.