MARY FEDDEN. ROWING BOAT, WHITBY HARBOUR, 2004. FOR SALE

MARY FEDDEN ARTWORK FOR SALE. ROWING BOAT, WHITBY HARBOUR. 2004

FOR SALE

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Size unframed: 9.25″ x 11″ / 23.5cm x 28cm

Size framed: 22″ x 24″ / 55.5cm x 60cm

Medium: Gouache on handmade paper

Signed and dated: “Fedden ’04”

Framing: Gold and silver gilt stepped frame with cream double mount. Glazed

Provenance: Private collection UK

MARY FEDDEN ARTWORK FOR SALE. ROWING BOAT, WHITBY HARBOUR. FOR SALE

Mary Fedden was a create of habit! Over her exceptionally long artistic career (she was 96 when she died in 2012), Mary frequently returned to paint the same objects, scenes or landscapes, often many times. She never ‘copied’ a previous work, but many favourite objects or places reappear again and again.

Rowing Boat, Whitby Harbour is such a painting. Although a rowing boat is not necessarily a particularly frequent subject, the backdrop of the famous harbour at Whitby, North Yorkshire, certainly is. The quaint harbour scene, with a local fishing boat apparently gently chugging out to sea, passing the lighthouse and watch towers at the harbour entrance, was painted fairly often by Mary.

With her husband, Julian Trevelyan, Mary was a frequent visitor to the English coast, staying with friends and recording scenes of boats and seascapes in her in many sketchbooks. These scenes would then be worked into artworks when back in her Durham Wharf studio, often appearing in many different incarnations over the subsequent years and decades. In particular, they loved visiting Aldeburgh in Suffolk and Whitby Bay on North Yorkshire coastline. Whitby is only 45 minutes drive from Farndale, also in North Yorkshire, where Mary’s stepson, Philip Trevelyan, still lives.

This harbour scene appears to be a typically “Feddenesque” minimalist stylisation of the harbour at Whitby Bay. Mary used a very similar composition as the backdrop to another painting in my Fedden collection, Onions and Garlic (now sold).

Rowing Boat, Whitby Harbour is a charming Fedden gouache/watercolour and a lovely example of Mary’s seascape paintings. It is very well presented in a contemporary gold and silver gilt frame behind glass and is in excellent condition.