
Deborah Cliffe
Senior Sale Coordinator
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Sold for £16,250 inc. premium
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This portrait of a ship 'Miltiades' -with its distinctive green hull moored in Falmouth harbour- was painted by Henry Scott Tuke in two days on 4th and 5th July 1899. As Tuke notes in his diary: 'Green ship today and yesterday, Miltiades'. There is a thick impasto around the hull and sea areas, which suggests that Tuke took the canvas back to his studio and added to it there.
At the time, Tuke was also painting a large canvas depicting Mercury -the winged messenger of the Gods- called Hermes at the Pool (R338), which he exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year. In his diary for 6 July 1899 he also wrote how he had entered the Penryn regatta and won his race easily.
'Miltiades' was built in Aberdeen and is one of the Aberdeen line, as her lower masts are painted white whilst the upper masts are brown, and she flies the Aberdeen line house flag of red and blue with a white star in the middle on her main mast. The ship moored in Falmouth on its voyage from TalTal in Chile to Dunkirk under Captain Ayling.
We are grateful to Catherine Wallace, author of Catching the Light. The Art and Life of Henry Scott Tuke, and Ron Hawkins from the Library at the National Maritime Museum, Cornwall, for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.