Montague Dawson RSMA
1895-1973

Many years ago, Montague Dawson held a large and prestigious exhibition of his works in Bond Street; the preview being opened by Lord Mountbatten, as a favour to an old and dear friend. The show was packed and the champagne flowed. One of the paintings, -a 28" x 56" canvas, showing a tea-clipper laid over on its beam ends by a squall, caught the attention of two large pin striped bankers. 'These artists,' boomed one to the other - 'don't know a thing! Boat like that so far over, could never come back up again'! Dawson, who was not of large stature, reached up and tapped the 'experts' shoulder. 'Forgive me for overhearing your remark' he said 'but I assure you, she did come back up and we all made it safely back to port"! A double illustration of Dawson's first hand experience of these ships and the sea, and the absolute integrity with which he treated his subjects. Deep sea sailors can study a Dawson painting and tell you what ocean, what latitude and the season the artist has depicted, all from the colour of the water and the run of the waves, so accurate was his eye, and his understanding of his subject.

Henry Dawson (1811-1878) was Montague's grandfather and a keen marine painter himself. Dawson's father was an enthusiastic yachtsman and it is not surprising that as a young lad, Dawson spent much of his time messing about in boats in Southampton Water, to where the family moved from Dawson's birthplace in Chiswick. Here the young artist first saw the towering masts and elegant lines of that breed of sailing ship known as the 'tea-clipper'. Built for speed and endurance, at the same time able to carry a considerable tonnage, these vessels were designed to bring the tea harvest from China to the west as fast as wind and tide would allow-and then some. Huge fortunes could be made by the company who delivered the first cargo of the crop and so command the highest price and rivalry between captains was legendary. Dawson could portray these magnificent vessels under full sail in all their finery, "veritable clouds of canvas" like no other. He alone seemed to have achieved the ability to paint a ship under a full press of sail and put it in the water with apparent ease and a startling accuracy. Dawson's ships cut through the waves-they don't bob about on the top like so many lesser marine artists endeavours.

This ability did not happen overnight. For some ten years after World War I Dawson worked to find a technique which would enable him to paint the sea as no other artist had realised it before. He wanted to show light on the water and, at the same time shows light through the water. In this he was helped by Charles Napier Hemy, who Dawson met in the Royal Navy when he joined the Service at the beginning of the war. Napier Hemy never quite got the knack of what Dawson wanted, but through his influence and years of experiment, Dawson eventually achieved the desired effect.

He used the local fishing boats and the small yachts that abounded in Southampton Water as his models, and he frequently used gouache and watercolour to pursue his aims. By the early 1930's Dawson was satisfied that he could produce the desired effects and he began to paint the deep sea subjects for which he became so famous.

Then, in 1939 came a fortunate break which Dawson took and which was to teach him so much about tone values. Dawson was commissioned by the Sphere as an official war artist to depict incidents from the war at sea, Allied landings and propaganda subjects thought fit to release to the public to boost morale. Because the war effort dictated that magazines such as the Sphere should use second quality paper and inks with no colour printing, all the illustrations appeared as black and white. Dawson noticed that where he had one colour showing against another, in monochrome both appeared as the same tone, so detail was lost. He therefore began to paint in monochrome and became aware of the delicate subtleties of half-tone and light contrasts. When this knowledge was put into colour, Dawson's pictures suddenly took on a realism not seen before in any other marine artists work.

Such was his success that he ceased to exhibit at the Royal Academy (1917-1936) but he retained his membership at the Royal Society of Marine Artists (1946-1964). In the last years of his life, he used to joke that of every three canvases he painted, one was for the gallery, one was for the tax man, and the third one was for him! By that time his clients boasted the Royal Family, two American Presidents (Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson) and most of the important private collections of marine art on both sides of the atlantic. Today his pictures still continue to break records in auction and substantial demand for his works is sustained and constant.

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