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William Westley Manning (1868-1954) was a British landscape painter, etcher and aquatinter. Born in Marylebone, London, he studied initially at the Slade School of Fine Art, at the Académie Julian, Paris in 1892, and then at the Central School of Arts and Crafts under Malcolm Osborne. He was a prolific exhibitor including the Baillie Gallery, Chenil Gallery, Fine Art Society, Goupil Gallery, New English Art Club, Royal Academy, Royal Institute of Oil Painters and at many other venues in England and abroad. He was elected RBA in 1901, Associate of the Society of Painter-Etchers (ARE), 1919 and member of the Royal Institute of |Painters (ROI), 1918; he travelled extensively and was a frequent visitor to Cornwall and a member of the St Ives Society of Artists 1938-49. His work is in many public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum.
The Hastings Old Town net shops (or lofts) - approximately 50 black wooden sheds standing in neat rows on a shingle beach - are unique. They were built to provide weather-proof stores for fishing gear made of natural materials which rotted if wet for a long time. Today's materials are artificial and can be left in the open. Most net shops stand on a piece of beach that appeared suddenly after the first of the town's groynes were erected in 1834. The new beach area was small and close to the sea, so each shop could only have about eight or nine feet square to build on. But all boats had more nets than could be stored in such limited space, so the sheds had to grow upwards. Some have cellars. Many originally stood on posts to let the sea go underneath. Fishermen kept spare gear in the shops and one is now a museum. Although by the standards of early 20th-century printmakers these buildings weren't particularly old - less than a century when Westley depicted them - and nor were they prestigious from the heritage point of view at that time- they had an irresistible, instant picturesqueness which is nicely captured in this aquatint. Appropriately, one of Westley's figures is depicted mending a net. Evening sunlight weaves pleasing patterns on the net shops.
See:
British Museum, 'William Westley Manning (Biographical details)', http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=116016
Wikipedia, 'Hastings Old Town', 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings_Old_Town
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2018