ABSTRACT
The beach played an important role in nineteenth-century British art. In the early part of the century, Turner and Constable made repeated studies of waves crashing on beaches, in Margate and Brighton respectively. The resulting exhibition pictures showed contrasting facets of the beach: Constable focused on seaside visitors seeking health and fresh air, Turner on the darker subject-matter of shipwrecks, death and destruction. Other artists depicted the fishermen and women at work, studied rock formations or celebrated the exploits of heroic lifeboatmen. All these subjects were part of the larger category of seascapes and coastal scenes, which acquired particular resonance in British culture because of their associations with the navy, and hence with the national character and its assumed propensities for bravery, scientific enquiry, even democracy. This essay will examine four key paintings from the mid-Victorian years which exemplify these associations: William Powell Frith’s Ramsgate Sands (1852–1854, Figure 1.1), William Dyce’s Pegwell Bay (c.1858–1860, Figure 1.2), John Brett’s A Morning amongst the Granite Boulders (1872–1873, Figure 1.3) and Winslow Homer’s Four Fishwives (1881, Figure 1.4).
