Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are happy to offer this marine watercolour by the talented artist William Thomas Nichols Boyce, who has signed the painting W.T.N. Boyce in the lower right hand corner and dated it 1903. The painting depicts some fishing drifters from the Lowestoft fishing fleet and other shipping. The LT letter on the sails are the port letters for Lowestoft and their fishing fleet primarily caught herring.

William Thomas Nichols Boyce was born in the fourth quarter of 1857 in Blakeney, Norfolk, the son of a master mariner. The family moved to South Shields in 1872 and William initially became an apprentice joiner and then worked as an assistant in a drapers, before becoming a full-time professional artist. He was a self-taught artist and painted principally in watercolours, marine scenes of shipping along the North East coast of Britain, providing a valuable record of the transition from sail to steam. There are a few oils, but they are quite rare. He was a prolific artist and his paintings achieve high prices.

In 1880, William married Mary Anna Gillan (1862-1903) and they had eleven children, all of whom survived to adulthood. Three of his sons Herbert Walter Boyce 1884-1946, Albert Ernest Boyce (1886-1956) and Norman Septimus Boyce were all amateur watercolour artists and Herbert passed examinations at South Shields set by the RA schools in South Kensington. Works of all three have been to auction.

William Boyce is not known to have exhibited his work outside Northumberland, but he did exhibit at South Shields Art Club, the Bewick Cllub, Newcastle and from 1905 until his death, at South Shields and the Artists of the Northern Counties exhibitions at the Laing Art Gallery Newcastle.

He died in South Shields in the 3rd quarter of 1911 at the young age of 53, leaving a large and young family, the youngest being only ten, after his wife died eight years earlier.

He is listed in The Artists of Northumbria by Marshall Hall, The Dictionary of Victorian Painters by Christopher Wood, The Dictionary of British Watercolour Painters by H. Mallalieu and Painters in the Northern Counties of England and Wales by Dennis Chiold.

The watercolour has been newly double mounted in two-tone acid-free mountobard and is framed in a brown and gilt wooden frame, which suits it very well. It will be supplied with new brass hangers, new brass picture wire and will be ready to hang.

Image size: 15 7/8 x 9 1/4 inches - 40.35cm x 23.2cm

Frame size: 22 3/4 x 16 3/4 inches - 57.8cm x 42.55cm

Medium: Watercolours on paper

Condition: Very good. There is no foxing and the colours are bright and true. The mounts are new and the frame is in very good condition.