Bermudian Art

Engravings, Etching & Prints of Bermuda Interest

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ALLEN, Ray.

John Smith's Bay, Bermuda.
Signed in pencil lower right, "Ray Allen"
Etching.
5.75 x 7.875 in. (14.6 x 20 cm)

Biography

Little is known about this artist other than he lived and worked in Bermuda, probably around the 1940’s and thereafter.

JONES, Joe. (1934 – 1993)

Reaching for the Sun.
Signed in pencil, lower right “Joe Jones”
Titled below

Associated American Artists lithograph.

11.25 x 14.25 inches (28.6 x 36.2 cm.) ( sight size – item framed )

For a biography on Joe Jones download here Joe Jones

KIRKPATRICK, Donald Morris. (1887 – 1965)

A Busy Dockside
Signed lower right in pencil “D.M. Kirkpatrick”
Image: 13.75 x 9.75 in. ( 34.9 x 24.8 cm)

For a biography on Donald KIRKPATRICK download here Donald Kirkpatrick

KIRKPATRICK, Donald Morris. (1887 – 1965)

Captain’s All
Signed lower right in pencil “D.M. Kirkpatrick”
Image: 14.5 x 9.75 in. (36.8 x 24.8 cm)
Framed

Condition: light foxing throughout.

For a biography on Donald KIRKPATRICK download here Donald Kirkpatrick

Spy. (Sir. Leslie Ward for Vanity Fair)

Below the Mark. [c. 1908]
Signed lower right in lithographic form, “Spy”
Lithographic print.
13 x 10 in. (33 x 25 cm)

Biography

According to the Vanity Fair magazine biography page (here in photocopy form) that would have accompanied the original print, the following biography of Samuel Langhorne Clemens is included under “Men of the Day”:

"Samuel Langhorne Clemens, commonly known as Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Missouri, U.S., on the 30th of November, 1835. This date is greatly to his credit, inasmuch as it makes him out to be at least an hundred ; for we have every respect for grey hairs and we wish no man discontinuance. It is further to Mr. Clemens’s credit that in our English, “Who’s Who” he describes himself as an “American novelist and lecturer” – not you will note, a humorist.

We need not say that Mr. Clemens has had a career. It is one of those unfortunate careers which everybody knows about. Little boys in the street can tell you that Mark Twain was “once a pilot on the Mississippi.” and that at the age of thirteen he became a printer. At fourteen he became a humorist, and at fifty he left it off, having discovered that it was a bad habit. Since then he has written novels and made speeches. The novels are generally conceded to be “not so dusty.” The speeches are forgotten, but if you take the trouble to dig them out of the newspaper files you will find that in each of them Mr. Clemens manages to accuse himself of theft. “I once stole a bishop’s hat,” he says, amid the plaudits and laughter of the overfed; “I once stole a crowbar”; “I levanted with the ship’s anchor and some gas pipe,” and so forth. This is Mr. Twain’s joke, and it never fails to set the table in a roar. In 1867, Mr. Clemens wrote “The Jumping Frog,” and essay in sheer and dismal solemnity which has captivated four hemispheres. “The Jumping Frog” was notable chiefly for it’s references to “this yere Smiley.” It was the parent of cartloads of American humor dumped on us by the late Chevalier Alden and Mr. Robert Barr. We have suffered accordingly; but it is now all over. Mr. Clemens also write “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”; and he also wrote “Puddinhead Wilson.” He also write “A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur,” and when he went to the Court or Garden Party of King Edward VII., and said “Howd’y?” to her Majesty the Queen, he is understood to have left this work at home with his bath towel. Which reminds us that last year Mr. Clemens was in our midst. He went to Oxford to see the Pageant, and he went to the Hotel Cecil to dine with the editor of “punch.” The editor of “Punch Brothers, Punch.” You scratch my back ; I’ll scratch yours! Then of course, Mr. Twain went away and the Ascot Gold Cup went a-missing. Oh, dear! oh, dear!

Roughly, Mr. Twain is understood to be a nice man, He has white hair, a ferocious, lamby, white moustache, and he wears white dress suits. He is believed to have refused enormous offers of money for stenciling space on these suits. He is a sportsman and dislikes Mrs. Baker Eddy and the King of the Belgians. The people in America who do not happen to love him have to put up with him. The people of England love nobody else - when he happens to be here."

[Maritime Interest - Early 19th. Century Bermuda copper engraving].

Wells fecit: Watering Tank at Tobacco Bay, Bermuda.

Bermuda engraving.

Published 28 Feb, 1803, by J. Gold 103, Shoe Lane.

Acquatint. 130 x 220 mm.

General Comments:

This engraving was published in the Naval Chronicle. Gold was the founder and publisher and Wells was the engraver. According to the research of Ian Mackenzie a J.(John) G. Wells has been cited and this is probably the same man.

“The original Naval Chronicle was a publishing phenomenon from its first publication in 1799 to its demise twenty years later. Founded by Mr. Joyce Gold, it naturally found a market among naval officers during the great wars with France, when the naval procession was at its largest and most successful. But it also aimed at a wider audience. As the publisher wrote in the first issue: ‘We shall endeavor to make The Naval Chronicle as useful and interesting library of itself to the seamen, and an acceptable work to everyone who partakes of the glory acquitted by our brave countrymen in their own element.’

It is not surprising that the great wars with France created a boom in maritime publishing. The navy was swollen to over 145,000 men, with perhaps 15,000 officers or potential officers and their families, hungry for information. The other great nautical publisher of the age, David Steel, produced charts, the first regular Navy Lists, books on shipbuilding, rigging and seamanship, and commercial directories and gazetteers of use to the merchant seamen. There were works of instruction such as D’Arcy Lever’s Young Sea Officer’s Sheet Anchor, though they tended to assume that the reader is a midshipman already at sea and take too much for granted. Naval biographies began to appear, especially of Nelson and it is no coincidence that the first was partly written by James Stainier Clarke, who worked with Gold as editor of The Naval Chronicle for two years.

The Naval Chronicle was perhaps the most influential maritime publication of the age, and this continues into the twentieth century.

C.S. Forrester describes how he bought a set of volumes to read during a voyage through the West Indies in the 1930s and this inspired his Hornblower novels, thus reinventing a strain of naval fiction which remains prominent today. The Naval Chronicle is not always easy to read. The prose style of 1800 can be used to great effect by a writer like Jane Austen, but it is often long-winded and pompous, and many of the magazine’s correspondents take a long time to get to the point. The terse style of a naval officer reporting a victory is very welcome.

As the publisher points out, the forty volumes of The Naval Chronicle are difficult to find today outside the major libraries. It is unlikely that anyone will reprint the whole series at an affordable price.” [Lavery].

Source:

"Naval Chronicle: The Contemporary Record of the Royal Navy at War"

Nicholas Tracy (Ed.)

Review by Brian Lavery

National Maritime Museum

Journal Issue: September 2000