Antique Collecting articles Wyllie Still Making Waves

The Sea King
Although hugely loved and highly collectable, it is possible to find reasonably-priced work by
the marine artist William Lionel Wyllie, says Richard Kay

Figure 3. Fishing boats and a destroyer, possibly in the Solent, watercolour and pencil, signed, 4.75 x 10.75ins. Wyllie liked the
juxtaposition of sail and steam with the navy and fishing. Note how much he favoured a distant horizon rather than more enclosed
views. This made £1,310 at auction this July.

Figure 1. HMS Victory, etching, signed, 11 x 8ins. A predictable subject for a
marine artist living in Portsmouth as this is arguably Britain’s most famous
vessel. Wyllie found a ready market for numerous variations on this theme,
particularly around 1905 (the centenary of Trafalgar). It sold at auction for
£430, in September 2013.

IT IS RARE TO FIND AN ARTIST,
inextricably associated with just one sort
of subject, whom everyone admires.
William Lionel Wyllie is held in just such
high regard: even art collectors who
have no interest in marine pictures
recognise Wyllie’s work in the saleroom
with a sort of quiet affection, rather like
spotting one’s elderly former
schoolteacher in the supermarket.
Wyllie’s popularity is easy to understand on a couple of levels – he was
undeniably skilful in all that he did and
his work has a straightforwardness about
it that makes its subject matter quite
plain – but the more puzzling aspects of
12

Figure 2. Towards Rochester, watercolour and pencil, signed and inscribed, 11.5 x
8.5in. This view was drawn when Wyllie was living above the Medway. It captures
the busy activity of the Medway, the sheer grandeur of the river itself, and it
allows Wyllie to explore the technical subtleties of aerial perspective. Mediocre
condition and with a slightly odd palette, hence the low price. It fetched £355 at
auction in September 2013.

his appeal are its longevity and the broad
base of collectors whom his work continues to attract. Of course, some buyers
are retired or practising sailors but others
are confirmed landlubbers who would
neither know nor care about the differences between a brig, a barge, or a
bakinka. Those in this latter group would
be pleased to add a Wyllie to their collection but would not rush so eagerly to
acquire a work by marine painters of the
calibre of, say, Frank Henry Mason or
Charles Dixon.
This article looks at what may be
found by Wyllie for under about £1,500.
Sadly, no oils by him fall into that price

range and the affordable watercolours
are becoming scarcer too, but I have
selected eleven images – five etchings and
six watercolours – that would grace any
collection without breaking the bank.
Early years
Wyllie was born in Camden, London, on
July 5th 1851. He was the elder son of the
relatively little-known artist William M.
Wyllie, a man of fairly prosperous origins,
and Katherine (nee Benham) who had
already had two children by Percy Smythe.
Young Wyllie’s artistic abilities were
obvious to all and he showed his first work
at The Royal Academy in 1868, aged just

seventeen. He completed his art education
at Heatherly’s school and the RA in 1869.
Shortly thereafter bought a boat,
`Ladybird`, to use as a floating studio so his
intentions were clear from this early age:
he wanted to be a marine painter but
nearly gave it all up for a career at sea
after subsequent works were rejected by
the RA. Nonetheless, he was kept busy by
The Graphic, a rival to the all-conquering
Illustrated London News. The precise
draughtsmanship required for illustrative
work focused Wyllie’s attentions on
drawing and etching. Aged 28, he married
Marion `Mim` Carew, nine years his junior,
and she bore him nine children. Tragically,
two died in infancy, one died in adulthood
and two were killed in the Great War.
Only son Harold became an artist of any
distinction (he was a dutiful but
uninspired imitator of his father and even
copied his father’s handwriting). In 1883,
Wyllie’s masterpiece entitled Toil, Glitter,
Grime and Wealth on a Flowing Tide (Tate
Britain) was bought for £700 by the
Chantrey bequest (£80,000 in today’s
money) and it was eagerly praised for its
industrial and gritty realism. Emboldened
by this good fortune, Wyllie moved his
young family from Chatham to Hoo Lodge
above the Medway in 1885. The house had
the convenient benefit of offering a fine
vantage point from which to paint the
bustle of the river below (fig 6). Within
four years of this move, he became a fully
established figure in artistic circles when
he was elected Associate of the RA. His full
approval as a printmaker par excellence
did not come until 1903 when he was
elected to the Royal Society of PainterEtchers and Engravers. In addition to his

art, Wyllie wrote thoughtful technical
guides on painting. He then moved to The
Tower House in Portsmouth in 1906, a
home so close to the Solent that the
ground floor was regularly flooded (fig 9).
He was elected a full Royal Academician in
1907 but also researched esoteric matters
of astronomy that appealed to him.
During the war, he travelled with the navy
and painted at the Western Front. By the
late 1920s, Wyllie’s work was in such
indomitable demand that he survived the
Depression without needing to slacken his
pace but his etchings became harder to
sell afterwards (the etching boom expired
just before Wyllie did). In 1931, aged 79,
he was working on a vastly ambitious 42ft
panorama of The Battle of Trafalgar,
helped in part by his daughter Aileen, but
he died in London on April 6th of that
year. He was buried at Portchester Castle
near Portsmouth and three of his last
works were shown at the RA that summer,
the paint on them barely dry.

Why Wyllie?
While the above may seem like an unfairly
brief resume of a full life and a career that
spanned eight decades, three essent