Antique Collecting Magazine - July-August 2009 Extract


ANTIQUE COLLECTING The Journal of the Antique Collectors' Club

Extract from the July-August 2009 Magazine

THOMAS BUSH HARDY RBA (1842-1897)
A Master Painter of Marine and Coastal Watercolours

by John Morton Lee

A lthough Thomas Bush Hardy is one of the best-known and most prolific marine artists of the Victorian era, very little has ever been written about his life and works. Remarkably few private papers, personal letters or diaries exist. Fortunately, Hardy signed, inscribed and dated a significant number of his finished paintings, making it possible to trace his progress both in time and space.
Geographically, one of the conundrums about Hardy is how and why a boy born and brought up by his mother and maternal grandparents in Sheffield, far distant from the sea, became an artist committed almost exclusively to marine and coastal subjects. His first experience of the sea, following a quarrel with his fiancee, was to work his passage to the United States during the Civil War to join a Yankee brigade. Wounded and invalided out, he returned to England and, at the age of twenty, married the girl he had left behind. Mary Ann went on to bear him seven daughters and a son.
Apart from one impressive monochrome sketch of shipping at Liverpool, painted in 1867, it is presumed that, for much of his early life. Hardy, self-taught, painted only seldom, and then for his own pleasure. Two of the earliest watercolours to come on to the market in recent years were both dated 1869: one of a flat-bottomed ferry carrying people and ponies across a river (figure 1), the other of fishing boats off the Nab Rocks at Scarborough. The fact that Scarborough was fast becoming a seaside resort would delight Mary Ann and the children but, of far more importance to Hardy, it remained primarily a major fishing port with a resident colony of professional and amateur artists. It was almost inevitable that the artists and fishermen he met in the taverns and harbour area would provide Hardy with the inspiration to start painting in earnest and to concentrate henceforth on maritime subjects.

Figure 12. 'Doge's Palace, Venice', signed, inscribed and dated 1879, 12¼in. x 19 1/8in.

By 1870 the family had moved to London, Hardy working as a clerk with the Inland Revenue until he felt he could earn enough from painting full-time to support his growing family. Thanks to the rapid development of relatively cheap rail and ferry links, travel between England and the Continent was becoming increasingly popular. Many artists were well aware of the potential market for paintings of Continental scenes, including Hardy who, travelling from Harwich to the Hook of Holland, was soon on the beach at Scheveningen. Over the years he was to spend many productive days with a fishing community for whom he developed enormous respect.

But for the moment, his travels to the Continent were restricted by the need also to familiarise himself with similar opportunities on the eastern and southern shores of England.
Living in London provided a marine artist with a whole range of attractive subjects within easy reach: the Pool of London, the docks and wharves leading down to Deptford, Wren's magnificent Hospital at Greenwich and the great river itself ebbing and flooding past the fields of Essex and Kent. The days of sail might be numbered but it would be many years before coal-fired freighters replaced sailing ships and barges; meanwhile the artist with a knowledge of sail could put his talents to good use. Hardy must have painted the Thames at Greenwich many, many times, rarely from the same viewpoint and always in different conditions of wind, tide, the season of the year and the time of day (figure 2).
Above all, he introduced every type of ship, barge and boat going about their business, often in less than pleasant weather.
Very accessible to London by both river and rail was the River Medway where, in contrast to some of his stormy Thames scenes. Hardy painted at least one serene and sunny watercolour (figure 3). Further down the Thames estuary, Ramsgate, Margate, Deal and Dover all provided backgrounds for the fishing boats and larger sailing vessels that he enjoyed painting both offshore and alongside or at anchor, Fifty years earlier. Hardy's great predecessor, Joseph Mallord William Turner, had painted in watercolour several series of views on the coasts of England, most of which were reproduced as engravings. Hardy, during the 28 years of his active career, also painted watercolours of almost every port, harbour and beach on the same coasts, from Bamburgh Castle in the north-east to Plymouth and Swansea in the south-west, but, so far as is known, they were never engraved or printed during his lifetime.
Of great importance late in Hardy's life was Portsmouth, not so much for its role as Britain's premier naval base, but because it was there in the 1890s that he set up a studio for aspiring marine artists. For several reasons this seemed a sensible choice - good communications with London (by this time the family were living in some style in Barnes), an inspiring naval rearmament programme, and a flourishing fishing community. Sadly, the influence of his young students, one of whom became responsible for some very suspect watercolours reaching the market, and the often over-congenial atmosphere of a naval port both affected Hardy - he started drinking too much. Accentuated by financial worries, his work began to deteriorate. The watercolour of a fishing boat off Portsmouth (figure 4) is a relic of his visits ther in a previous, happier decade.