Footnotes

Towards the end of his life, Charles Napier Hemy who had spent a lifetime observing the sea and sailing on it, focused more on capturing the speed and exhilaration of yacht racing in and around Falmouth, Cornwall, where he was based.

Many of his works from 1903 –1917 feature his sons racing yachts that he had bought just about every season and got them to run past his floating studio, a purpose built yacht Vandermeer. This particular watercolour is very similar in composition to his major oil of 1905 'Youth' (Hartlepool Museums). Both paintings have the same three young men working the boat, one with a red and white striped hat on pulling ropes for the main sheet, another in blue jumper and trousers pulling on a foresail rope and the third in white shirt and trousers lying on his front steering the boat with his hands on the tiller whilst looking forward underneath the boom.

Hemy was inspired to paint his sons yacht racing after seeing them come back from a local regatta. "They hailed me and came alongside, made fast and boarded me. They were wet through as it had been blowing hard. They were shivering with cold, tired and exhausted. I soon had them in dry clothing and gave them hot soup. "Well, ' I said" you are a lot of young fools." Oh, but it has been such fun we enjoyed ourselves " To which I replied, "Youth"! But what it is to be young. Some days later I got them to sail past my cabin windows again and again, whilst I made studies of the sea... I then had the boat hauled up into my garden and painted the boat and figures from nature."

This watercolour could be seen as a study for his oil 'Through Sea and Air' 1910 (Laing Art Gallery). Even though the figures relate more to his earlier painting 'Youth', the boat is a new version and appears as the model in both this work and the oil 'Through Sea and Air' of the same year 1910.

We are grateful to Catherine Wallace for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.