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Overview
Arthur Briscoe (1873-1943) was an etcher and painter of marine subjects. Educated at Shrewsbury School, he studied art at the Slade School under Fred Brown and at the Académie Julian in Paris and then spent his time sailing. Briscoe painted and wrote on yachting subjects including Handbook on Sailing under the pseudonym of Clove Hitch. Briscoe portrayed not just sailing vessels and the sea itself but, in particular, he delighted in portraying seafaring men at work.
Briscoe's original prints are now generally acknowledged as the finest marine etchings of the 20th century, as they display both the artist's intimate knowledge of the sea and his mastery of the etching needle. In particular, Briscoe conveyed the motion of the sea itself and the varied effects of light and shade with extraordinary economy of line. In 1926 Briscoe made a superb scale model of the Cutty Sark, a vessel which appears intermittently throughout his sketchbooks.
In this etching, seven fishermen are depicted struggling with their net in gentle surf. Landlubbers would mistakenly believe they are fishing in the famous French river; seine or seine-haul fishing employs a fishing net called a seine, that hangs vertically in the water with its bottom edge held down by weights and its top edge buoyed by floats. Seine nets can be deployed from the shore as a beach seine (as here) or from a boat. Briscoe's scene suggests sympathy with the fishers' hard toil, and could certainly be regarded as an etching counterpart to a St Ives School painting, informed by the artist's profound maritime knowledge.
See: http://www.campbell-fine-art.com/artists.php?id=128
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art March 2018
See: http://www.campbell-fine-art.com/artists.php?id=128
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art March 2018