MARINE ART
I Couldn't Take My Eyes off Cook's Endeavour By Oswald L<mgfield Brett Oswald wngfield Brett, born in 1921 in Sydney, NSW, is the biographer of his friend and fellow Australian Alan Villiers in this issue. A seaman and scholar, he is also a distinguished marine artist, and here he tells how, like Villiers, he chafed at shore life "Down Under" andfollowed the great navigators he idolized to sea. Sydney, NSW where I was born in 1921, is one of the world 's great seaports and a paradise for yachtsman. My forebears came to Austra lia ea rl y in its history, some of them on the establishment of the colo ny at Sydney Cove in 1788. My earliest memories are of always attempting to draw and paint. My mother was an outstanding po rtraiti st who did exquisite work in watercolor. An art student in her youth , she never worked professio nall y, and finall y gave up, she said , when I would take her brushes on learning to walk. M y mothe r had two dark blue-bound vo lumes of Victorian paintings over which I pored e ndless ly. In one of these was reproduced Thomas Somerscales' classic Off Valparaiso of which I made a copy when I was eleven. The orig inal of this magnificent oil is now at Greenwich , a nd is perha ps the finest sea piece ever painted- if o ne is permitted superlatives in matters of taste . I also greatly ad mired the paintings by Anton Otto Fischer in the Saturday Evening Post. At the time I was copying Off Valparaiso , a painting was presented to the school I attended , by the late Judge H.V. Evatt , a distinguished jurist, politician and historian who almost became Prime Minister, and whose son was a classmate. This pai nting was by the noted Australian mari ne artist John All cot , and hung in the classroo m . The subject was Captain Cook's Endeavour off Tahiti , showi ng the island aglow in the golden haze of late afternoo n with the ship under sail pitching into the blue trade w ind surges . This painting struck a res ponsive cho rd in my psyche, a nd I couldn' t take my eyes from it ; schoolwork beca me irreleva nt. I obtained perm iss io n from the headmaster to copy it on afternoons after school. I even copied it twice and improved with the second try! This Allcot painting not onl y stimulated a lifelong interest in Cook a nd his Pac ific voyages of discovery, but Australian maritime history generall y. It also crystallized certai n ideas I had about becoming a marine a rtist and of goi ng to sea. This painting quite literall y cha nged the course of my li fe. I the n bega n pes tering my mothe r to take me into John Allcot's studio where I cou ld meet the artist , a nd see mo re of hi s o riginal work. One very hot day in the city when I was twelve she reluctantly consented. My mother must have been extraord inaril y long suffe ring, since I wonder whether I would have obliged my c hildre n at that age with such a request . Whe n we a rri ved at the studio, it was noo n a nd John was o n hi s way o ut and my first impression of him was of being extremely short in stature and very broad , with piercing grey eyes and a marvellously dry sense of humo ur. Although in a hurry he ve ry kindly showed us a fasci nating a rray of landscapes, ha rbo r, yachting and shipping subj ects which were framed and ready to be taken away. The variety of subj ect matter attested to how compete nt , ve rsatil e a nd pro lific an artist John was. My mother ex plained how I collected a nd copied reproductions of his wo rk from cale ndars and magazi nes , and how I e ntertained ideas of perhaps someday becoming an artist. John told my mother - no doubt fo r my benefit-that thi s would not o nl y e ntail study and application, but I would also have to acqui re the ab ility to draw. (Just g ive me the cha nce, I thoug ht to myself') I then asked : " Did you go to sea , Mr. A llcot?" John replied: " Yes , for ten years, it's a dog 's 1ife- the re are compensat io ns, though ." Then we all went dow n in the lift to the street , and in response to my eager questions John furthe r told me that he grew up in Li verpool, whe re his father was a shipmaster. John added that he first vis ited Australia in a
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hungry Scottish bark in 1907. The country and its climate made such an overwhelming impression that upon returning to England he stowed away in a steamer to return to Australia . When discovered at sea , the " Old Man" signed him on , and John pa id off in Sydney. At thirteen I attended an inte rmed iate high school nea re r to th e ci ty, and after school , now being acq uainted with John Alcott , I'd take the train to town a nd vis it John in hi s studio returning home later. A ny drawings o r painting I'd done I wou ld submit for John's crit icism and advice. Quite often he wo uld demonstrate how they might be improved in either colour o r composition . Since he never objected , I'd hang around and watch him paint wh ile av idl y listening to him expound o n ships and the sea , a rt , artists and literature . Snobbery, particularly in the arts, and prude ry, we re two subj ects abo ut which he became visibl y irritated . I would also make myself usefu l by running errands, a nd when there were paintings to be deli vered to the master of a ship, I'd often accompany John o n board. On such occasions John wou ld introduce me by say ing. " Oswald is a student of mine", whi ch I felt was a great complime nt. John also said ifl g rew any talle r he wo uldn't be seen on the street with me' * Becoming familiar with ships a nd sa ilors at thi s ea rl y stage of my life was an education in itself. Meeting shipmasters, seeing business transacted , and liste ning to ya rns about the sea made school dull by comparison. (My Engli sh teache r told me, " Yo u ' II e nd up like Masefield 's ' Daube r'"; a poem which I then studied a nd me mori zed , and years late r met the poet in England .) It was in these circumstances that I met Alan Viii iers in the Joseph Conrad, and later Captain Adrian Seligman in the St. Malo barquentine Cap Pilar. Meanwhile I continued to sketch and paint the ha rbor's pagea nt of shipping . An ideal vantage point was the towering sandsto ne ram part of South Head with the sunlit ro lle rs of the South Pac ific thundering on the rocks fa r below. Australia was also the last strongho ld of sailing ships a nd was visited a nnuall y by Germa n a nd Finni sh square-riggers to lift grai n cargoes , wi th an odd o ne turning up in Sydney. The graceful old pil ot steame r Captain Cook was kept busy in the offing with he r boarding wha le-boat putting .a pilot aboa rd a n arriving vessel o r picking o ne up from a hove-to o utwa rd bounder. I sometimes ventured to sea outs ide the Heads in a canoe hired from a harbo r boat shed to better see the ships and get the feel of the sea. This was an ex tre mely dangerous a nd foo lhardy practice, what with the presence of sha rks , and a coupl e of times I almost broached-to in heavy seas and came to gri ef! I ofte n wondered whether it might be poss ible to establish a " li ving" maritime museum and preserve some of the old ships inev itably bound for the shipbreakers, as well as res tore some of the a ncie nt vessels surv iv ing as hulks in th e ha rbor. Regrettabl y the time of the Ka rl Kortums and Pete r Stan fo rds had then not yet a rrived , and being so yo ung, my ideas received scant sympathy for such an undertaking . I had to conte nt myself by recording the m as best I co uld in drawings and paintings. My parents were very concerned abou t my interest in becoming a mari ne a rtist , but were appall ed when I broached the subject of go ing to sea , and mu st have wondered what was to become of me. I had no real ideas about a profess io nal ca reer at sea but thought that some ex pe rie nce as a practi cal seaman was indispensibl e fo r a marine art ist. At 15 1/2 my parents in desperation enrolled me at the East Sydney Technical College where I completed a three year a rt cou rse in little more tha n a year. During this time I even ma naged a trip to sea. Slowly I became proficient at drawing from life, a nd continuall y sketched a nd painted wate rfro nt and coastal sub *Archie Ho rka desc ribed Jo hn as be ing " built c lose to the dec k" (May 1973).
SEA HISTORY. SUMMER 1984