John Brett, A.R.A.

In his Studio Log Brett wrote, on 13 March 1899, 'Newtrain Bay Trevone, the best 19 x 10 sketch I have got, sent to Birmingham. It has deep blue colour and good beach pebbles and nice distant clouds. Price £63 (no offers).'

Some of Brett's best sea-scapes were painted on the coasts of Cornwall, including the magnificent The Lion, the Lizard and Stags of 1888-9 (private collection) painted a year before the present picture. Newtrain Bay and Gull Island, Cornwall was painted during Brett's family holiday in the summer of 1889 when they stayed at Padstow and made sketching excursions all along the coast from Trevone and Gunver Head, Newtrain and Harlyn the subject of Harlyn Sands (sold in these rooms 14 July 2016, lot 28). That summer the artist Arthur Hughes wrote to another fellow artist William Bell Scott that he had seen Brett 'making beautiful studies about the coast among the ripples and rocks. He does one small one complete at a sitting on fine and good days - beautiful skies and lovely seas, and foreground of the pretty mermaid tresses colouring the pools or what not.' (Christiana Payne, John Brett - Pre-Raphaelite Landscape Painter, 2010, p.167) Of his own work that summer Brett wrote 'I have a clear conviction that my sketches are better painted this year than at any previous date. ' (ibid. Payne pp.167-8) The quality of the present picture testifies to this.