ARTHUR BRISCOE-MARINE ARTIST
The Heaving Line is testimony to the grace and beauty of the ordinary bloke who knows his job and does it with skill and sureness. The unity of effort redeems this tough, angular seaman.
Watercolor Heavy Weather painted in 1938.
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However, Briscoe declined this golden road to fame and, inspired by the landscapes of John Wilson Steer-another famous Liverpool artist-moved to Maldon in Essex, attracted by the unique East Anglian scenery. As a boy he had sometimes accompanied his father in a converted Isle of Man fishing boat, but had not evinced undue interest. Now he made friends locally and was soon fired with enthusiasm for dinghy sailing and, being a useful carpenter, he built his own. The dinghy gave way to a 3-ton gaff-rigged cutter, in which he started cruising, and this he continued when he married a local girl who joined his sailing activities with zest and expertise. Soon a son was born and joined them aboard in the long sailing season, though this entailed buying the Vera, a bigger craft. In 1906 Briscoe made a trip to the Baltic in a Danish barquentine which had been discharging timber near their home, and it was in this year that he held a most successful one-man exhibition in a London gallery entitled "Round the North Sea and Zuyder Zee." His tide had definitely turned, and he was from then on primarily a marine artist. The Briscoe family cruised extensively in the North Sea, the Dutch canals and the English Channel, and he became a frequent contributor of articles in a well known yachting magazine. He was a fast worker, particularly in water colours, yet he was not prolific. Although he could and did execute water colours aboard his yacht, larger oils had to wait until he was ashore in his studio. Although he was supposed to be earning his own living (which he could easily have done), he had a generous allowance from his mother. Indeed, when his famous yacht the Golden Vanity was built in 1908, and when he moved into a fine house further along the coast two years later, it was his mother who financed these operations. Thus, he was not motivated in the manner of artists less financially secure, and that is why we rarely find his work as illustration (save as favours to editors who were his friends), as advertisements or as prints. Basically he was painting for his own pleasure and satisfaction.
SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1978