An American On The Tyne!

 

‘An American on the Tyne’

Recently, Chris Tipple came to talk to our club about the American artist, Winslow Homer, who lived and worked in Cullercoats in the early 1880’s.
Winslow Homer, born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1836, was a modestly successful painter in watercolours, starting as a freelance illustrator in 1857 at Harper’s Weekly. Following that he was sent to illustrate the battlefields of the American Civil War in the early 1860’s, where he developed his craft for location portraits.

Subsequently, in 1881 he travelled to London to study the work of the great land and seascape painter Turner. After a short period he moved to the then traditional fishing community of Cullercoats, here in the north-east of England. Although it is believed that he rented a house in Cullercoats village, when he first arrived, he lived in room 17 of the Huddleston Arms Hotel. This was demolished in 2005 and replaced by apartments which now display a blue plaque on its walls to mark its auspicious resident of yester-year.

His studio was just across the road, at number 12 Bank Top. That was demolished in 1930, but the housing accommodation which replaced it, is known as Bank Top.

At the time of Homer’s residence in 1881, Cullercoats would have been a small, isolated village with around 2,000 inhabitants who were almost entirely dependent on fishing, carried out by men and boys in traditional open-topped wooden boats of a regional design, known as cobles.

After living and working in the north-east, his painting style was transformed; so that when he returned to the US at the end of 1882, he became known as one of the greatest American watercolour painters of his time.

After a number of illustrations accompanied by music, Rotarian Chris Davison gave an observant vote of thanks.