‘As far as the sea is concerned I know no place quite equal to this for colour, clearness or steadiness of demeanour.’
(John Brett, Early Travels, 28 September 81, quoted in John Brett – A Pre-Raphaelite in Cornwall, 2006, p. 50)

In the last week of September 1881 John Brett wrote home from Newquay that the Duchy of Cornwall had refused his offer for a parcel of clifftop land at Tolcarne Point, on which he had hoped to build a summer house for Mary and the children: ‘It seems as if Cornwall had decided to keep us out.’ The disappointment closed his first long Cornish summer with a refusal that, two years later, would push him to buy the schooner Viking for his summer painting from then on.

Brett had holidayed in Cornwall between June and September of 1881 with his wife and six young children. They had taken a house called ‘Bothwicks’, set midway between Tolcarne Point and Towan Beach, with steps from its garden to the sand. Enraptured by the coastline, he produced an extensive body of work of which the present is one of the most ambitious, finalised back in his London studio. It was then sent to the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists for the Autumn Exhibition that year. It came on the back of a period of growing success for Brett, with Britannia’s Realm (1880, Tate) having been bought for the nation under the Chantrey Bequest the previous year, and in February 1881, he had been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.

Situating the viewer on the beach, the painting gives a dramatic outlook across the waves, with Towan Head visible on the horizon, catching the light of the late afternoon against the slate grey sky behind. To the right of the headland is a small two-masted lugger with russet brown sails and a larger schooner, its full sails white against the horizon. A curtain of rain descends across the picture, clouds darkening to violet; gulls beat across the middle ground and breakers roll in, their crests blown back to a fine spray. It is a highly atmospheric work and instantly relatable. As Brett described of his ambition when writing in the Pall Mall Gazette about another work, Echoes of a Far-Off Storm, (1890, City of London Corporation): ‘My picture is not a portrait of a place, but it is of an effect which is constantly to be met with on the coast of Cornwall.’

The detailed painting technique is one Brett had refined since his Pre-Raphaelite beginnings and adapted to the demands of marine subject matter. The early Glacier of Rosenlaui (1856, Tate) and The Stonebreaker (1857–58, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) had set out a discipline of even truth across the whole of a landscape; the later seascapes apply the same evenness to the harder subject of moving water. This is most keenly witnessed in the waves or the present work: a constant, shimmering movement with translucent greens and blues revealing the depth of the water and constant play of light, reflecting the Pre-Raphaelite intensity for detail and luminosity.

The compositional structure is a shift from Brett’s previous seascapes such as Britannia’s Realm and The British Channel Seen from the Dorsetshire Cliffs (1871, Tate), which looked outwards from a higher viewpoint with no reference to the land. Here, the viewer is brought down to the sand, and it is a formula to which Brett would regularly return. ‘For John Brett, Cornwall provided a lasting source of inspiration, drawing him back again and again over the course of three decades. The legacy of these visits is an astonishing body of work, detailing both well-known and obscure coastal views, capturing the spectacular splendour of the Cornish scenery.’
(Alison Bevan, Preface to John Brett – A Pre-Raphaelite in Cornwall, Penlee House exh. cat., 2006, p. 7).

We are grateful to Charles Brett for his assistance and contributions to this essay.