Edward Robert Smythe, Figures & Horses on a Beach with Buildings - Antique Oil Painting

This late 19th-century oil painting by English artist Edward Robert Smythe (1810-1899) depicts a picturesque bay with buildings, fishing boats, figures and horses. Smythe was a masterly painter of rustic landscapes and an exhibitor at London’s Royal Academy.

Produced towards the end of his career, this piece from around 1880 is a fine example of Smythe’s preference for pale light and his respect for traditional crafts. In the foreground, a weary horse rests alongside various equipment designed to pull fishing boats ashore. Further along the beach, we see this in action - a second horse, attached to a ‘skid’, drags a vessel onto the beach. One can imagine the artist marvelling at the strength of these beasts, determined to paint them at work. The location is unknown, but it’s possibly somewhere in East Anglia, such as Felixstowe, where he visited often. He’s handled the gently rippling sea particularly deftly as it rolls across the sands. The breakers are illuminated with dashes of impasto. The light, too, is captured with skill, as it escapes through gaps in passing clouds.

Born in the historic port town of Ipswich, Smythe possessed a keen interest in drawing from an early age and presumably sketched numerous views of the Suffolk coastline. He associated with several local painters, such as Fred Russell and Walter Hagreen, and quickly established himself as an artist of repute. With an abundance of inspiration at his fingertips, he was soon elected to the Ipswich Society of Artists and opened a studio at the ‘Old Shire Hall’.

Ipswich is one of England’s oldest towns, and during the early part of the 19th century, it was still predominantly driven by agriculture. However, with the advent of industrialisation, its emphasis shifted towards engineering and manufacturing, which gradually eroded its rustic charms. It’s telling that Smythe, who was an artist with a deep connection to nature, moved to Bury in 1851, which had retained its agricultural roots.

It’s evident from the tone of his oeuvre that he was fixed upon a certain view of the world, and treasured both the uncomplicated endeavour of rural communities and the gnarled beauty of the Suffolk countryside. Like Constable and Gainsborough before him, he delighted in the ‘rugged realism’ of his local environs - leaning timber-framed cottages, overgrown foliage, weary cattle groups, and dog-eared inn-dwellers. Rarely does a tree grow straight in his rustic rose-tinted utopia. His ‘A Farrier Shoeing a Plough Horse with a Donkey in a Forge Interior’, painted in 1899, is reminiscent of works by George Morland (1763-1804) and could’ve been produced a century earlier.

Resisting a move to London, he remained in East Anglia throughout his life and was supported by significant patronage from aristocratic admirers. These included Lord Cardigan, who commissioned an oil painting titled ‘The Charge of Balaclava’, which was subsequently bequeathed to Queen Victoria.

In old age, he returned to St Matthew's, Ipswich, to live with his daughter and son-in-law. He was still working at 89.

He’s represented in numerous public collections, including at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Towneley Hall Art Gallery & Museum, and Weston Park.

Signed in the lower right and held in a later frame.

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Medium: Oil on canvas

Overall size: 23½” x 14½” / 60cm x 37cm

Year of creation: c. 1880

Provenance: Private collection, UK.

Condition: Cleaned. Faint stretcher mark. Craquelure throughout. The paint layer is stable. Two tidy patched repairs. Frame in excellent condition.

Artist’s auction maximum: £60,752 for ‘Favorite Hounds, the Property of E. Walter Greene Esq, Master of the Suffolk Hounds’, Oil on canvas, Bonhams, Fine Art: Dogs In Show & Field, New York, 13 February 2013 (lot 186).

Our reference: BRV2094