An English Frigate and Other Shipping in the Solent off Calshot Castle
Date:
undated
Materials & Techniques:
Watercolor and pen and gray ink on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 10 1/4 x 15 inches (26 x 38.1 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, The U Collection. In appreciation of Choh Shiu and Man Foo U, loving parents, and Dorothea and Frank Cockett, dear friends
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B2008.30.30
Gallery Label:
This watercolor captures the light of a breezy day, with its patches of sunshine and seagulls wheeling overhead. The freshness of the representation belies its geopolitical significance: the round tower built by Henry VIII at the opening of the River Solent, farther along the south coast, had been in nearly constant use as a defensive structure since the sixteenth century, and, as the smoke from its chimney and the activity around it suggest, was in use into the later eighteenth century. Gallery label for Spreading Canvas - Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2016-09-09 - 2016-12-04)