Charles Napier Hemy, RA RWS

(British, 1841-1917)

'Tipping Out a Shrimp Trawl'

Footnotes

Provenance
Agnew and Sons, London.
The T. Eaton Company, Canada.
Private collection, Canada.

Charles Napier Hemy came to settle in Falmouth in 1881 after he married Amy Freeman (his second wife) on 25th August 1881 a year after his first wife had died. Prior to that on his many visits to Falmouth he had rented a house at 1, Park Terrace, Falmouth which is the address on the back of this painting. By 1884, when this painting was dated, Hemy had built his own house called Churchfield in Kimberley Place, which is just round the corner from Park Terrace.

It does suggest that this painting was possibly produced at an earlier date and that 1884 was added later. However the style does seem to echo that used in similar works of the mid 1880s such as 'The Smelt Net' 1886. Hemy also produced a pen and ink sketch of this painting, which could well have been the study for it.

It was probably painted from Hemy's floating studio, the converted seine boat Van de Velde as the boat in the painting is positioned in the middle of the Falmouth harbour looking across to Trefusis point with the Roseland peninsula beyond.

The fisherman is depicted in a small beam-trawl boat, where approx. 8 to 10 foot beam separated the two trawl-heads. The ' D shaped hoop of metal' depicted at the stern of the boat would have kept the beam well clear of the bottom, and the mouth of the net open. The net is made from a 'Y' or 'V' shaped bag of fine mesh material, laced to the beam, and the trailing edge of the trawl-heads. The bottom of the mouth would be weighted slightly, to drag across the seabed. *

In the painting, one trawl-head is lying in the boat, and the other hangs over the stern. The fisherman has the funnel-end of the net raised, shaking any catch out into the bottom of the boat.

The fisherman would row to the spot over a shallow bank where he intended to fish. Here he would drop then either drift down with the tide, or row back, while the line on the windlass paid out. Once this had reached its limits, the shrimp trawl would have been lowered over the stern on a short line. The fisherman would then have hauled the boat and trawl ahead by the windlass until he was nearly over the anchor, and then hauled the trawl to see what he had caught.*

* This information on shrimp trawling methods was provided by Tony Pawlyn Hon. Head of Research at National Maritime Museum, Cornwall in Falmouth.

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