Railway sheds, Marseilles.

Sir Muirhead Bone (1876-1953) was a Scottish artist known for his piquant drypoint etchings, draughtsmanship and watercolours. Bone originally trained as an architect at the Glasgow School of Art. After initially taking night classes, he turned to printmaking in 1898. Self-taught, his early works likely took the style of those he studied, chiefly Charles Meryon and James Whistler. In 1901 Bone moved to London, quickly gaining a reputation, moving in the same circles as art collector Campbell Dodgson and D.Y. Cameron, a contemporary of Bone in etching and a fellow Scotsman. In 1916, Bone successfully campaigned for the role of the first official British War Artist, filling the position in both World War One and World War Two. Between the World Wars, Bone continued to build up a considerable reputation, exhibiting frequently in both London and New York. A mentor of many young artists, he served as a trustee of the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery and Imperial War Museum. He was knighted in 1937.

Bone's watercolours and lustrous drawings are evidence of his incredible skill in depicting often grim wartime landscapes and human activity. However, it is in his drypoints that we can see his true mastery over architectural detail. His strengths are in rendering line and balance to create dynamic cityscapes, concerned primarily with the existence of buildings in all their states, including the comings and goings of their construction. Bone's architectural training is a fetchingly persistent ‘backbone’ in these works.

In this work Bone creates an incredible spectacle out of industrial Marseilles. The vista is unusual yet compositionally magnificent and his architectural understanding is obvious. Scenes of industrial life spread throughout the picture plane; railway workers prepare horses and carriages for oncoming cargo, while three children are in the lower right foreground; one leaning over the edge of the wall, a sleeping man to their right.

The essence of movement is ripe in this work; it feels as though a train might burst through the tunnel at any second. Indeed, this is could be what the boy leaning is waiting for. People hurry about everywhere, in the railyard, crossing the bridges and streets that line the right side of the work; the teeming city of which they belong to appears to only be stopped by the mountains in the distance.

Despite being a densely packed urban panorama, Bone’s ingenious treatment of the composition refreshes the scene. The vantage point of the viewer is comprehensible yet highly interesting: we are simultaneously asked to look both up at the buildings on the right, while we also gaze down upon the railway lines and shed, boxed in by their industrial surroundings.

Sources:

British Museum, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=131762

David Cohen, ‘Bone, Muirhead’, Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, accessed: 6 December 2017

National Galleries Scotland, https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/sir-muirhead-bone

Wikipedia, 'Muirhead Bone', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muirhead_Bone

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    August 2018

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   December 2017