Lionel Percy Smythe 1839-1918

London, Royal Academy, 1882, no. 675

STRUCTURE The canvas has been relined. CATALOGUE COMPARISON The illustration is broadly representative. PAINT SURFACE The paint surface is in clean condition with an even varnish. Ready to hang. ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT UV light reveals retouching to frame abrasions along the right and upper edge, scattered feathery retouching in the sky, some infilling to the figures and spots of retouching in the water. FRAME Held in an ornate plaster gilt frame which is in fair condition.
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Lionel Percy Smythe was the half-brother of the well-known marine painter William Lionel Wyllie and shared an interest in coastal subjects. He spent much of his childhood at Wimereaux in Normandy and between 1879 and 1882 Smythe lived in a Napoleonic fortress on the sand-dunes at Wimereaux, which his family had to vacate when it was engulfed by the ocean. It is likely that Shrimpers was painted from studies made in 1881 of women catching shrimps on the shore at nearby Boulogne. In 1881 Smythe painted Shrimpers- Boulogne (unlocated) which was exhibited at the Royal Academy that year, the first of his exhibits there that was certainly painted in France. Smythe developed a particular interest in painting French fishermen and fisherwomen and following his move from Wimereaux he lived at the Château d'Honvault at Wimille, a peaceful village ten miles from Boulogne. Boulogne had been famous for shrimping since medieval times and had attracted artists since at least the early nineteenth century when David Cox painted the women with their huge nets (Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford). 'His fisher-folk are healthy, open-air workers, natural and without self-consciousness, not sea-nymphs posing with an eye to picturesque effect... They all come into his artistic scheme just as they are, and they please him because they have much of nature's unaffectedness and joy of life.' (A. L. Baldry, Lionel P. Smythe, A.R.A., R.W.S.; An Appreciation of his Work and Methods, in The Studio Magazine, May 1910, p. 177)