Down to the Coast Essay Competition Due Monday 29th April

DOWN TO THE COAST PROJECT

‘Bonchurch and the Isle of Wight School of Artists

IW FREE SCHOOL ESSAY COMPETITION Open to all GCSE Art & Design Students

Competition Brief

Pupils are invited to write an illustrated essay describing between one and three artworks of Bonchurch, Flower’s Brook or Steephill Cove in which they briefly describe the artist, the artwork(s) of their choice and any physical, environmental or cultural changes they can observe that have taken place over time compared with the present day scene.

The essay should be a maximum of four sides of A4 with not more that two pages of images (with captions) - maximum typeface size Pt. 12.

Students will be provided with a selection of digital images of artworks by Isle of Wight School artists; from these they may select painting(s) of their choice and insert images within their essay. They may also include their own artworks if they wish as they may illustrate changes that have affected the landscape over time.

The essays are required in digital form by 31^st March 2019 and four prizewinners will be selected. Their works will be displayed at a major exhibition at Ventnor Botanic Garden to be held from 1^st – 9^th June 2019 and prizes will be presented to pupils at the Exhibition Preview at the Botanic Garden on Friday 31^st May at 6pm. All participating pupils and their parents will be invited to the Exhibition Preview.

1^st Prize - £100

Three high quality runner-up prizes.

The artworks will be included in the Final Technical Report for the ‘Down to the Coast’ project.

Professor Robin McInnes OBE FICE FGS FRGS FRSA

Project Manager

VICTORIAN IOW PAINTERS

In artistic terms perhaps the most important venue on the Isle of Wight from the 1840s was the village of Bonchurch, just to the east of Ventnor. Here charming stone villas with ornate verandas were built within sheltered gardens and rocky cliffs, overlooking the beautiful village pond and the sea. The beach and coastline proved a particular attraction for artists, who portrayed the activities of crab and lobster fishermen going about their work along the shore. Peter De Wint OWS (1784- 1849) painted ‘Bringing in the Catch at Ventnor’ in 1814. He made several drawings about this time that were, later, included in W. B. Cooke’s ‘Picturesque Delineation of the South Coast of England’ (Cooke, 182624).

A school of artists developed at Bonchurch, with Seaside Cottage on the shore being rented annually by a succession of eminent names including Edward William Cooke RA, Clarkson Stanfield, Thomas Charles Leeson Rowbotham NWS (1823-1875) and Thomas Miles Richardson Jnr RSA RWS (1813-1890). There is a remarkable similarity in the technique adopted by artists like Richardson, Rowbotham, George James Knox (1810-1897) and Isle of Wight artist William Gray (fl.1835-1883). Their rich ‘Mediterranean’ palate with the extensive use of heightening with white is typical, and it is almost certain that the prolific Island topographical artist, Gray, was a pupil and painting companion of Richardson and Rowbotham. On one occasion in 1861 the latter two artists painted an identical scene of a coal boat being unloaded on the beach at Bonchurch.  

The important Victorian watercolourist Myles Birket Foster RWS (1825-1899) and his family moved to Bonchurch, renting the seaside villa, Winterborne, for a period of recuperation from tuberculosis. Whilst living there, he produced at least ten fine watercolours of children on the beach at Bonchurch.

 ’At Bonchurch’ by Edward William Cooke RA (c.1850). Cooke produced numerous ‘geological’ pictures such as this on the Isle of Wight coast between Ventnor and Shanklin. A follower of the Pre-Raphaelite School, Cooke painted extremely accurately and his work was greatly admired by the Victorian art critic, John Ruskin.