James Holland, 20th Century Artist

Estuary sketch

If Holland had art materials with him, you could be sure he would start sketching.  On french family holidays, table cloths would be covered with drawings of the food, waiters, the scene if I took too long finishing my dinner.  While others bought postcards or took numerous photographs, Holland would fill sketch books and any scraps of paper that were to hand with images of what he saw around him.

Not all of these sketches would then be turned into more formal paintings, but his studio would have these small drawings littered around and often mixed in with other correspondence if there had been a hasty tidying up session.  If I wandered into the studio and commented on something, if it wasn't in a sketch book or planned for a full painting, I would often be given the picture to put on the wall of my room.

This simple black watercolour sketch is one of my favourites of this genre - showing a river estuary with a number of small boats dotted around.  It could have been Cornwall, Brittany or Normandy, but is highly effective in depicting the scene.

 
Untitled monochrome ink and watercolour sketch on paper, unsigned, undated, in a private collection.

 

 

Lowestoft lino cut

As indicated in an earlier post, Holland was fascinated by the fishing port at Lowestoft, and did a major series of paintings of it.  He also explored showing the harbour in other media, including this study done as a lino cut.

 

He created three blocks for this print, one for black, one for red and one for green, and sent copies to his friends as a Christmas card.

Lowestoft Harbour, lino cut in three colours, one of a number of copies, c. 1973.

 

Houseboats

Today's picture is another study of boats, this time houseboats moored either on the Thames or in Essex, and dates from the 1950s.  This charming study uses another of Holland's favoured  colour themes - dusty pink - for the horizon panorama as well as on one of the boats.

As indicated, Holland's garage was severely damaged during the "hurricane" of October 1987, but this was where many older or larger works were stored.  Even from the photograph as it appears on the web page, but more if you click on the image for an enlargement, you can see the damage wrought by water and time on this work.  This is a great shame as it is a charming scene.

 

Houseboats, oil on board, significant water damage, signed, not for sale.

 

 

Polperro Harbour

During the 1970s and early 1980s, friends of Holland owned one of the houses on the harbour wall at Polperro in Cornwall.  Holland visited the house on a number of occasions out of season, enjoying the atmosphere in the local pubs with the fishermen and the opportunities for sketching.  In particular he enjoyed the challenges for drawing boats in the narrow tidal harbour and the way the village climbed up the steep valley.

This picture shows a boat in the harbour at high tide, and with one of Holland's favourite oppressive skies.  This may have been based on sketches done at New Year 1978/79, when Holland was trapped in the village for several days by heavy snowfall.  There are other pictures in private collections showing the harbour and village under thick snow - a rarity at sea level in Cornwall.

 

Polperro Harbour, oil on board, signed, undated, framed, available for purchase - price on application.

 

 

French beach

Not all Holland's paintings are dominated by the green and purple spectrum of colours.  Today's painting shows a sunny holiday scene, but with sea and boats as well.  When travelling with a car, it was easier for Holland to take an easel, a number of boards and different paints with him, so that he could chose the best media to capture what he saw before him.  This painting sketch of the beach at le Treport in Normandy, with fishing boats drawn up onto the shingle is a good example of one of his holiday snap shots.  The view looks east along the coast with its white cliffs to Fecamp in the distance.

In 1999 I spent a few days with my husband on the Normandy coast, and when we got to Fecamp, it seemed foolish not to carry on to see le Treport and the view along the coast, to compare it with this picture.  For anyone who tries the same, the road to le Treport is tiny and easily missed, but when you get to the beach the view is the same, but dependent on the weather!

 

Fecamp from the beach at le Treport, 1988, oil on board, framed, signed, exhibited at The Art Connoisseur Gallery 1997, available for purchase - price on application.

 

 

Boats on the Medway

Holland was comfortable with a variety of media.  So far the pictures featured on this blog have been oil on board, but he was equally at ease with lino cuts, drawing, lithographs and watercolours.  The featured picture of this article is a watercolour painted in 1987.  The challenge of photographing watercolours is that the glass used for framing is generally reflective to some measure, so you will observe some strange light and shadow effects.

This picture demonstrates Holland's ability to work from memory as well as from sketches and from life.  The scene is of Medway barges, still with sails and rigging as could be seen in Holland's childhood before the First World War, in port on the river.  Chatham and Rochester were busy ports in the early part of the 20th Century. 

 

Medway Boatyards Remembered, 1987, watercolour, framed, in a private collection.

 

 

 

Lowestoft

Holland was fascinated by the great fishing harbour at Lowestoft, and undertook many studies of the buildings themselves, the workers and the boats in harbour.  Many of these works date from the 1950s when the harbour and the fishing trade was still flourishing in East Anglia.  The semi-industrial nature of some of the scenes set the tone for his later works in the early 1960s in Birmingham and the Black Country, which were very dark and moody.

This oil on board study of a single vessel is typical of the colour palete Holland used at the time, and while one of the smaller works portraying Lowestoft (less than 24 inches wide unframed), shows his passion for the subject.  More Lowestoft works will appear in due course.

 

This unframed work is available to purchase - price on application.

 

 

 

Boats at Plymouth Docks

Holland was always fascinated by ships and the sea - both his parents had worked at the Royal Dockyards at Chatham, his father as a blacksmith and his mother in the sailmaking lofts.  On one of his last visits to Plymouth College of Art and Design to do their external assessments, he was taken round part of the docks.  For once, he didn't have a sketch book with him, or time to get his impressions down, so he asked the PCAD team to take some photographs of four old boats that were waiting to be broken up.  Once he received the photos, he painted two versions of the scene, one as oil on board (shown below) and another version as a watercolour (now in a private collection).  These works were done around 1980, and both paintings took the name of one of the boats - Trevol and Friends at Plymouth.