This painting comes from Holland’s post-War period in the late forties and fifties, when he was still attracted by social realism, but had the opportunity to use larger canvases and more colour. The subject is a dock area, and could be anywhere around the British coast – Hull and Lowestoft are possible sources of inspiration. The impression is of an early morning, once work has started at the docks but before wives and school children are out and about. The composition invites the viewer to walk on round the corner, to see what is beyond the pub.
This is a large painting and consequently spent time in Holland’s garage, subject to extremes of temperature and humidity, which hasn’t helped its condition. When I unearthed it from a pile of other works and asked if I might be allowed to take it away and give it wall space, Holland cleaned it up with his patent mixture of “terps and linseed” and signed it, and then looked at it for a long time. “I’d forgotten about this one – it’s good but it’s a bit bare, let me add some people.” I made a deal with him that he could add some people if he travelled to my house to do it – in some ways it is a shame he didn’t make the journey, on the other hand I actually like the lack of people. Here’s why.
For a few years I lived in Wallsend on Tyneside, near the Swan Hunter shipyard. The pub on the corner looks very like the one that used to stand just south of the Metro station, called the Carville Hotel. This (in my day) rather unpleasant dive always put me in mind of the yard workers’ pub known locally as the Penny Wet. That was actually the Station Hotel further up the hill (demolished in the 1960s to make way for the Forum shopping centre). The name was given as it was where dock workers got a penny tot of rum or similar before heading into work in the shipyards.
The painting does not show Wallsend – there is no steep slope down to the river for a start. However the traditions would have been the same up and down the coastline, even if the names of the pubs were different, and this would still have been the place of the shipyard workers.
The Penny Wet, oil on board, c1960, in a private collection