Breaking up of the Great Eastern No. 1

The printmaker and painter Sir Frank Short (1857-1945) originally trained as an engineer but left this line of work to pursue a career as an artist. He attended evening classes at Stourbridge School of Art before moving to London. In London he studied at South Kensington and Westminster Schools of Art, mastering the techniques of mezzotint, aquatint and etching.

Short exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1885 and 1904. He won two gold medals for engraving at the Paris Salon in 1889 and 1900. Soon after this he became a teacher of etching and was professor of engraving at the Royal College of Art between 1913 and 1924. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers (now the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers) in 1885, becoming its President between 1910 and 1938. Short was Master of the Art Workers' Guild in 1901 and an Associate Member of the Royal Academy in 1906, where he became Treasurer in 1919 until 1932. He was knighted in 1911 and was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1917.

Short lived and worked in London and Sussex for most of his life. He was considered one of the leading figures in the field of etching and engraving in the early 20th century, responsible for reviving interest in mezzotint and aquatint techniques.

The SS Great Eastern, was Isambard Kingdom Brunel's massive 22,500-ton steamship that was so far ahead of her time that her length (nearly 700 feet) and tonnage would remain unmatched for four more decades. She was by far the largest ship the world had ever seen and was intended for the passenger and cargo trade between England and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). 

Though christened Leviathan during a initial launching attempt in early November 1857, she was thereafter always known as Great Eastern. Nearly three months' costly struggle to get her afloat, and more problems while she was being completed, left her original company bankrupt. New owners decided to employ her on the route between Britain and North America. However, insufficient capitalisation restricted outfitting to luxury accomodations, thus ignoring the decidedly non-luxurious, but very profitable immigrant trade. The ship's financial difficulties continued, compounded by a series of accidents. At the end of its days, in August 1888, having been used as a fairground and advertising hoarding, the fate of the Great Eastern was sealed when it was sold for scrap. Deconstruction work on the ship started on 1 January 1889, on the banks of the Mersey. Taking the iron hull apart was a matter of brute force, and over the next two years men chiselled, levered and hammered its plates apart until there was nothing left. A sad end for a magnificent 'Wonder of the Industrial World'.

The destruction of the ship gave birth to the macabre legend that two skeletons, the remains of a riveter and his bash-boy, were found inside the sealed double-bottomed hull. At the time it was thought that perhaps it had been the souls of these poor unfortunates that had cursed the great ship with so much bad luck.

Short made two etchings on the theme, numbered 1 and 2, this being the first. It is the more conventionally finished etching, with the scene at low tide and mooring posts in the foreground. Under a bleak sky, the silhouetted hulk of the once great ship looms on the horizon, destroyed in almost her entirety for the first third of her length following the vestiges of her bow. Short draws on J.M.W. Turner, James Whistler and particularly Seymour Haden (Te Papa 1955-0012-3) as his precedents for this poignant print.

See:

Allinson Gallery, 'Sir Frank Short...', http://www.allinsongallery.com/short/breakingup.html

Wikipedia, 'Frank Short', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Short

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   May 2018