Antique Collecting articles Wyllie Still Making Waves | Page 3

Figure12. Portrait photograph of Wyllie, taken in 1920 when he was about 70. Note the etching needle in his hand. He sports the ideal beard for a marine painter. Reproduced by kind permission of The National Museum of the Royal Navy. efforts inspired his work and, of course, there were sailors, merchants and captains of industry who were in turn inspired by these scenes of life that they knew and understood so well (fig 8). Admittedly Wyllie had to jostle for these men’s attentions alongside such able artists as Frank Watson Wood, Frank Henry Mason, Charles J. De Lacy, William M. Birchall, Charles Dixon, Herbert M. Marshall and a score of others, but his work had the bravura of accomplishment to outpace most of these rivals at every turn. Undoubtedly, Wyllie’s awesome productivity ensured that his work was not too troublesome to find. Figure 10. Lobster Fishermen, Sheringham, East Coast (Norfolk), etching, signed, c. 1918, 7 x 9ins. One of Wyllie’s more ‘humble’ subjects, depicting the honest toil of hardworking fishermen. Note how the blank and unetched area in the centre of the plate creates the illusion of sunshine. It made £215 when sold at auction in September 2013. Approachability The last element of Wyllie’s appeal is his image as a ‘common man’. That is neither to belittle his comfortable background nor to judge unkindly any aspect of his gentlemanly manners or his avuncular, white-bearded appearance (fig 12). Not for Wyllie the dandyism of Whistler, the avaricious swagger of Munnings, the bohemian hedonism of Augustus John or the furtive inscrutability of Sickert. Intriguing as all these artists were for such quixotic and picaresque caprices to their personalities, Wyllie was a practical, practising, pragmatic artist’s artist. He worked tirelessly, always with great skill but also with dependable reliability; he was not a disciple of any artistic movement, nor did he seek to be; he had pupils and disciples but no enemies; and he never sought to be anything more than a talented and observant artist. From the heights of Hoo Lodge or the perilously weatherbeaten walls of The Tower House, Wyllie worked conscientiously for many decades. Had you knocked on his salt-spattered front door in Portsmouth, I feel certain that he would have welcomed you in to ‘come up and see his etchings’. Charmed by the man himself as much as by his art, you would have been wise to buy one. Richard Kay is the Director of Pictures at Lawrences in Crewkerne. Following a degree in the History of Art from the University of St. Andrews, he began his career at Sotheby’s in 1987, specialising in British and European pictures and prints. He is a regular lecturer and has contributed to Antique Collecting for 20 years. Figure 11. Kjobenhavn (Copenhagen), watercolour and pencil, signed, 8 x 13ins. Regrettably, a fullyresolved marine watercolour like this by Wyllie is only readily available under £1500 if one is happy to settle for a foreign view. Nonetheless, this subject has a bright and bracing vivacity and a distinctly Scandinavian boldness and clarity in the light. Wyllie has understood well the myriad subtleties of colour in a sunlit sea. It achieved £810 at auction in September 2013. 16 All illustrations, except fig 12, were sold at Lawrences in Crewkerne. In September 2013, we offered a collection comprising 186 works by Wyllie (with a further 140 by William Walcot and Edmund Blampied). Each lot is illustrated in the catalogue. A few copies are still available, free,request one at [email protected]. 17