Montague Dawson R.S.M.A., F.R.S.A. 1895-1973

"My painting gives me a tremendous sense of exhilaration almost as if I’m there on the ship itself. I’m living in a world of fantasy and the brush takes charge. But you have to get life into marine painting to make a ship move through the water, be lifted by the waves…"

Montague Dawson is generally and quite rightly, believed to be the greatest marine painter of the Twentieth Century and his dramatic images of clipper ships and merchant vessels battling against the elements of the high seas are powerfully compelling. Disliking commissions, Dawson painted what he liked and it was his enthusiasm for the subject and his incredible skill that gave the freedom and energy to his work.

Dawson’s grandfather was a notable landscape painter and his father was an expert yachtsman on the Thames, an inventive engineer and also a marine painter. Into such a successful family, Dawson was bound for great things and he was encouraged to play in boats as a child. The Dawson family home at Southampton Water, called Smuggler’s House was Montagues favourite playground and he was often to be found on the family cutter moored close by. He was to quickly familiarise himself with all the technicalities of yachting which made him such a successful marine painter in later years. Before he was a teenager, he had sold one of his paintings for over two shillings and had won a competition organised by The Boy’s Own Paper.

In 1910 Dawson joined a commercial art studio in Bedford Row and this experience proved useful when, during the First World War whilst serving in the Royal Navy his artistic talents were put to good use producing illustrations for weekly journals. It was during this advancing time in Dawson’s life that he met Charles Napier Hemy who nurtured his talent, as did Thomas Jacques Somerscales. The Second World War saw Dawson again working as an official marine painter, producing illustrations of naval battles for the War Artist Advisory Commission. By the 1930s, Dawson was well established as a professional marine painter and received many commissions. Extremely well-regarded and wealthy during his lifetime, Ron Ranson recalled (perhaps apochryful) that ‘Rumour had it that Montague Dawson was the second-highest paid artist in the world – surpassed only by Picasso…’. He certainly had enough money to buy several Rolls-Royces and to live comfortably in Milford-On-Sea in Hampshire, from the 1930s onwards.

Dawson himself wrote, "Of all ships, the clipper thrills me most. There’s terrific romance in a sail. No yacht or other boat has the beauty of the sailing ship bowling along in a spanking breeze – the hum and thrill of the sails." In The Sweep Stakers, Driving Hard he captures the energy and majesty of the leading ship in the race for the Sweepstaker trophy on the crest of a wave, surging forward under full sail. The awesome beauty of the ship and the animated power of the ocean are captured with the eye and touch of an artist who fully understood his canon and represented it with all the force of a yachtsman passionate about his sport and a painter passionate about his art.