Montague Dawson: Taking in the Jib

Montague Dawson: Taking in the Jib. This charming watercolour and gouache on paper shows a gaff-rigged dayboat with a royal blue hull surfing over a wave as the foredeck hand gathers the jib. There is a buoy in the foreground and a ketch sailing away in the distance. Signed ‘Montague Dawson’. English, circa 1930. Provenance: Sold Sotheby’s London, May 11, 1994. Montague Dawson Rmsa, Frsa (1890–1973) was the son of a keen yachtsman and the grandson of the marine painter Henry Dawson (1811–1878). He served in the Dazzle Painting Section at Leith in Wwi and 1924 was the official artist for an Expedition to the South Seas by the steam yacht St.George. He was present at the final surrender of the German High Seas Fleet and many of his illustrations depicting the event were published in The Sphere. After the war, Dawson established himself as a professional marine artist, concentrating on historical subjects and portraits of deep-water sailing ships often in a stiff breeze or on high seas. During Wwii he was once again employed as a war artist and again worked for The Sphere. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Society of Marine Artists, of which he was a member, from 1946 to 1964, and occasionally at the Royal Academy between 1917 and 1936. He was considered one of the greatest living marine artists, whose patrons included two American Presidents, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, as well as the British Royal Family.