The bell buoy
1900
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
47.3 × 85.5 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1906
© Public Domain
Gallery location
19th Century European Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
For Hemy, his calling was the sea, first experienced as a young boy sailing from England to Australia in 1850, where his father worked the goldfields near Ballarat for two years. Back in England, in 1862, Hemy began painting seascapes directly from nature in the manner of the Pre-Raphaelites. For the next three decades, Hemy’s work was devoted primarily to marine subjects painted around Falmouth and the south Cornish coast. These were both popular and commercially successful, bringing the artist a steady stream of commissions. Radical in its compositional emptiness, and a bravura demonstration of open, dragged brushwork, The bell buoy is a highly immersive picture, which chills the viewer and makes one feel almost flecked with cold saltwater spray from this scene of turbulent waters churning beneath a gloomy, cloud-locked sky.
Artwork Details
Inscription
inscribed in black paint l.l.: C. Napier Hemy - 1900.
inscribed in brown and black paint on reverse u.l.: No 1 No10. (No10 crossed out) The.bell buoy. (underlined) / C. napier Hemy. / Falmouth
inscribed in paint on reverse u.r.: New Gallery 1906
inscribed in pen and brown ink on paper label on reverse u.c.: No1 The Bel (...illeg.) / C Napier Heny / Churchfield (...illeg.)
Accession Number
268-2
Department
International Painting
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited
Subjects (general)
Marines and Seascapes
Subjects (specific)
buoys seas waves (natural events)
Provenance
Exhibited New Gallery, London, 1906; from where purchased, on the advice of Sir George Clausen, for the Felton Bequest, 1906.