John Brett, A.R.A.

The Caskets Lighthouse was painted in the year that Brett purchased ‘Viking’ a 210 ton, 100 foot schooner, formerly known as ‘Czarina’ when she belonged to Baroness Mayer de Rothschild and the Earl of Caledon before being bought by Mr Virtue, the publisher of the Art Journal. Brett seemingly had sea-water in his blood and had always loved boats and sailing. As a young man he owned a small yacht, ‘Baby’ in the 1860s which he shared with his brother Edwin who wrote a book on sailing. Brett paid £1,200 for Viking (almost half the original price) and the first summer’s expenses amounted to £1,219 for the wages of the twelve members of crew. This was a momentous purchase as it meant that Brett could take his wife Mary and their seven children away on long summer holidays on a boat large enough that it could be used as a floating studio. In the first year of owning Viking, the Brett family almost circumnavigated the British coast, leaving Southampton on 11 June and not reaching Brightlingsea until 11 October. On that inaugural trip they concentrated mainly on the Western Islands of Scotland and at Plymouth, where he found most inspiration for his painting. The Brett family spent the next three summers at sea on Viking and he painted a large number of wonderfully evocative sketches of the coast and the ocean. Mary was less keen than John on the cramped life at sea with her brood of children to entertain, a crew whose relationship with the family was not always easy and sea-sickness to contend with – she put a stop to the family adventures in 1885, refusing to set foot on Viking again. Brett had perhaps hoped that the purchase of Viking would coincide with an upturn in the prices he could achieve for his sea-scapes but the opposite was the case and it became an unjustifiable luxury.

On 6 July 1874 Brett took the GWR steamer from Weymouth to Guernsey, where he painted until the beginning of October. On the way he would have passed close to the Caskets, which lie about 8 miles north-west of Alderney. He probably sketched the lighthouse in passing, or at least made mental notes of its appearance, and these recollections bore fruit eight years later in the fulfilment of his commission from Mr Rickman. In its colour, serenity of mood, and the variety of craft depicted, the work is reminiscent of the artist's great seascape Britannia's Realm of 1880 (Tate).

Beatrix Potter met Brett in December 1883, shortly after the return to London with almost forty pictures painted aboard Viking: ‘Mr. Brett lives in Putney, but has a studio at a dentist’s in Harley Street. He was such a nice kind hearty little man, stout with dark red whiskers. He was very kind and told us a good deal of interest. He goes about the West Coast of Scotland in his sailing yacht in the summer, making small oil sketches which he uses for colour in his pictures which he paints in the summer in the winter months, chiefly from memory, though assisted by photographs, for he is a successful photographer. Mr. Millais says all artists use photographs now.’ (Leslie Linder (ed.), The Journal of Beatrix Potter, 1881-97, London, 1966, p. 65) Given the relatively large size of The Caskets Lighthouse, it is likely that it was one of the pictures painted in the Harley Street studio in the winter of 1883.

The Caskets (Casquettes) lighthouses are on the rocky islands eight miles northwest of Alderney in the Channel Islands. Friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote ‘Les Casquets’, a romance involving a girl who lived on the barren rock and fell in love with a carpenter from Alderney but had to return to Casquets because she found life on Alderney too hectic. A label bearing verses from the poem was previously attached to the reverse of this painting, 'From the depths that abide and the seas that environ / And rocks rear heads that the midnight masks / And the strokes of the sword of the storm are as iron / On the steel of the wave worn Casquets'.

We are grateful to Charles Brett for his assistance with this catalogue note.